Material extrusion-based additive manufacturing with multi-legged robot: fundamental investigation of path planning and manufacturing capabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to introduce a novel mobile Material Extrusion-based Additive Manufacturing (MEAM) machine designed to achieve complex and large scale fabrication without the constraints of size limitations. This is implemented by integrating a MEAM mechanism onto a multi-legged robot. This study also proposes methods for motion and material extrusion planning of the mobile MEAM machine and evaluates these methods through fundamental experiments. The results show that the accuracy of the fabrication is significantly dependent on the effectiveness of the motion planning and the accuracy of the robot control.