The global-player Siemens has been investing in 3D printing for a long time. Now they published a new project: Autonomous 3D printing spider-bots.
Siemens has already invested a lot in 3D printing technology. Recently they started building a new metal-3d-printing-facility in Sweden for 21.4 Million Euros. Now the research team has published their newest acquisition: A bot that looks like spider. But it is not only a bot, it can also 3D print objects out of polylactic acid (PLA).
The bots have different equipment on board to orientate themselves, for example a laser-scanner and a camera. The software was, as well as the hardware, developed by Siemens – they have used a medicated version of their NX PLM software. To get faster to their target, there more bots can work together on the same object. To enable this, the bots have a special algorithm and can communicate with each other. If the battery of a bot runs out it can send its progress 
to other ones and they can continue working on the object.
Siemens hopes to build different objects with their bots and it may be used for working in dangerous environment.
We are looking at using multiple autonomous robots for collaborative additive manufacturing of structures, such as car bodies, the hulls of ships and airplane fuselages
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