Each new generation of robotic fabrication tools has transformed manufacturing, enabling greater complexity and customization of the world around us. With the recent developments in additive manufacturing and mobile robots, several pressing questions have emerged. How can we use computational methods to expand the set of achievable material properties? How can we use mobile robots to do manufacturing? Finally, how can we use the answers from these questions to make robots more capable?
In this talk, I will provide answers to these questions. I will demonstrate how we can use generative processes to make deformable cellular materials and how mobile manufacturing robots can perform carpentry tasks. Deformable cellular materials enable open, close, stochastic and ordered foams. These are useful in actuation, protection and deployable structures for robots. Mobile robotic fabrication brings robots out of the factory and onto the job site, enables scalable manufacturing tools, and expands the set of programmable manufacturing processes. Together these two methods will enable the next generation of custom manufacturing.
Jeffrey Lipton is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. He did his post-doctoral work with Daniela Rus in the Distributed Robotics Lab at CSAIL. He earned his PhD with Hod Lipson at Cornell in the Creative Machines Lab. He was the lead developer for the Fab@Home project, which supported life science, material science and food science researchers’ 3D printing needs on all six habitable continents. His work has influenced two of the largest 3D printing companies in America and garnered media attention from the New York Times, BBC, and others.