Robot Spiders Get Involved In New Form Of 3D Printing

Robot Spiders Weave Products from Plastic in a New Spin on 3-D Printing

Siemens is testing teams of creepy-crawly 3-D-printing robots. Their descendants might make manufacturing lines far more efficient.

Will Knight | April 29, 2016

Robot Spiders Weave Products from Plastic in a New Spin on 3-D Printing
Siemens is testing teams of creepy-crawly 3-D-printing robots. Their descendants might make manufacturing lines far more efficient.
by Will Knight April 29, 2016
If you’re afraid of spiders, then you might find Siemens’s vision for future manufacturing lines a bit alarming.
In a lab in Princeton, New Jersey, the company’s researchers are testing spider-like robots that extrude not silk but plastic, thanks to portable 3-D printers. The robots can work together autonomously to create simple objects.
The work is at an early stage, but it hints at where manufacturing may be headed, thanks to more sophisticated robot hardware, smarter control software, and new ways of forming components using 3-D printing.

"The first prototypes of robots SiSpis or Siemens Spiders in the research laboratories of Siemens in Princeton." Source: http://www.4erevolution.com/en/siemens-spiders/

"SpiderFab robot spider in space." (SpiderFab Spider Robots To Weave Space Structures. March 28, 2015) Source: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=4492

<more at https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601330/robot-spiders-weave-products-from-plastic-in-a-new-spin-on-3-d-printing/; related articles and links: http://www.4erevolution.com/en/siemens-spiders/ (Siemens Spiders, workers of the future? May 7, 2016) and http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=4492 (SpiderFab Spider Robots To Weave Space Structures. March 28, 2015)>