The Navy is working with the National Science Foundation to fund research to help advance the process of using 3D printing technology in construction.
The partnership is helping to support a company called Contour Crafting, to help it develop processes to scale up 3D printing to the scale of buildings. In other words, giant robots printing buildings and putting them together in a concret manner, pun intended.
The following video is from Contour Crafting company founder, Behrokh Khoshnevis, professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California (USC).
He is active in CAD/CAM, robotics and mechatronics related related research projects that include the development of novel Solid Free Form, or Rapid Prototyping, processes (Contour Crafting and SIS), automated construction of civil structures, development of CAD/CAM systems for biomedical applications (e.g., restorative dentistry, rehabilitation engineering, haptics devices for medical applications), autonomous mobile and modular robots for assembly applications in space, and invention of technologies in the field of oil and gas. His research in simulation has aimed at creating intelligent simulation tools that can automatically perform many simulation functions that are conventionally performed by human analysts. His textbook, “Discrete Systems Simulation”, and his simulation software EZSIM benefit from some aspects of his research in simulation.
