About this Abstract |
Meeting |
2022 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2022)
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Symposium
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2022 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2022)
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Presentation Title |
Autonomous Manufacturing of Aerial Vehicles via Robotic Additive Manufacturing and Embedding |
Author(s) |
Tadeusz Kosmal, Kieran Beaumont, Eric Link, Dalton Phillips, Conner Pulling, Heather Wotton, Camille Kudrna, Joseph R. Kubalak, Christopher B. Williams |
On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Joseph R. Kubalak |
Abstract Scope |
Production of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) is broadly restricted to centralized manufacturing of a limited set of general-purpose designs. For deployed applications or missions with rapidly changing parameters, a more flexible manufacturing platform is required. Robotic Aerial Vehicle Fabricator (RAV-Fab) is a robotic workcell that leverages additive manufacturing (AM) and pick and place (PnP) operations to fabricate mission-specific UAS. In one automated process, i) UAS chassis are printed and ii) electronics packages are embedded and connected such that the UAS can fly out of the workcell with no human intervention. The use of AM and a modular set of electronics packages enables a wide variety of drone designs to be printed while minimizing impact on the supporting supply chain. This allows users to customize UAS designs for performance metrics (e.g., flight time, maneuverability, equipment, payload) in response to changing mission conditions in a deployed (e.g., rescue or extraterrestrial) environment. |
Proceedings Inclusion? |
Definite: Post-meeting proceedings |