[ad_1]
By Frankie Schembri
If fiberglass tubes suddenly started to come out of the ground, you might think that you came across an alien invasion. But such tubes are a real thing, woven by newly developed autonomous robots to create large structures such as bridges and temporary shelters, with minimal human input.
Each "Fiberbot" has a winding arm that pulls the fiber from a tank to the ground, mixes the materials in a nozzle and wraps the wet fiber around it like a cocooning of silkworms. Then, the robot turns on an ultraviolet light to cook the fiber in a hard tube. Then, he deflates his body and uses a tiny motor and wheels to get on the hardened fiber, where the process starts again.
The robots can rock and use different winding patterns to vary the thickness and direction of the tubes. As they are built, the Fiberbots communicate with each other via a computer network to avoid colliding or encountering other obstacles. Together, they can calculate the most efficient way to build a given structure.
In 12 hours, a team of 22 robots was able to build two tree-like structures 4.5 meters high (about the height of a double-decker bus), researchers report Science Robotics. The researchers had predicted that the trees of the robots would meet in the middle to form a tent shelter, but they discovered that the machines were actually correcting their trajectory to avoid colliding. The structure was able to stand unharmed for 7 months outdoors with strong winds, rain and snow in the fall and winter, until the researchers dismounted it.
The team says that the technology could be used to build structures in remote environments with unfamiliar terrain, such as after an extreme weather event, because instructions on what to build can be transmitted wirelessly to robots and adapt the diagram get in their way. With additional tests and enhancements, scientists say that Fibrebots could be used on other planets. It looks like they would be fine at home in a Martian landscape.
Source link
