Recent technological innovations in the areas of additive manufacturing and collaborative robotics have paved the way toward realizing the concept of on-demand, personalized production on the shop floor. Additive manufacturing process can provide the capability of printing highly customized parts based on various customer requirements. Autonomous, mobile systems provide the flexibility to move custom parts around the shop floor to various manufacturing operations, as needed by product requirements. In this work, we proposed a mobile additive manufacturing robot framework for merging an additive manufacturing process system with an autonomous mobile base. Two case studies showcase the potential benefits of the proposed mobile additive manufacturing framework. The first case study overviews the effect that a mobile system can have on a fused deposition modeling process. The second case study showcases how integrating a mobile additive manufacturing machine can improve the throughput of the manufacturing system. The major findings of this study are that the proposed mobile robotic AM has increased throughput by taking advantage of the travel time between operations/processing sites. It is particularly suited to perform intermittent operations (e.g., preparing feedstock) during the travel time of the robotic AM. One major implication of this study is its application in manufacturing structural components (e.g., concrete construction, and feedstock preparation during reconnaissance missions) in remote or extreme terrains with on-site or on-demand feedstocks.

翻译：近年来，增材制造与协作机器人领域的技术创新为实现车间按需个性化生产的概念铺平了道路。增材制造工艺能够根据客户多样化需求打印高度定制化的零部件。自主移动系统则提供了灵活性，可根据产品需求将定制零件在车间内不同制造工序间进行转运。本研究提出了一种移动增材制造机器人框架，将增材制造工艺系统与自主移动基座相融合。通过两个案例研究展示了该移动增材制造框架的潜在优势：第一个案例概述了移动系统对熔融沉积成型工艺的影响，第二个案例展示了集成移动增材制造设备如何提升制造系统的吞吐量。研究发现，所提出的移动机器人增材制造系统通过利用工序间/加工站点间的运输时间显著提高了吞吐量，特别适合在机器人增材制造运输过程中执行间歇性操作（如原料准备）。本研究的重要启示在于其可应用于偏远或极端地形中利用现场或按需原料制造结构部件（例如混凝土结构施工、侦察任务中的原料制备）。