Realizability and System Architecture for Collaborative Large-Scale Mobile Platform 3-D Printing Robots

Abstract Large-scale autonomous construction systems (ACSs) have become an important area of technology development in research years. Several areas remain to be comprehensively studied, including the design of both the construction equipment and final products, the science behind the materials used, system architecture, major applications (such space exploration, local disaster recovery, and expeditionary operations), and the realizability of the system. The realizability (manufacturability, assembly, and integration) of the system components is the most important of these at this point in the technology development, as it drives the feasibility and decision-making of the technology and enables the major applications. This article explores the realizability and system architecture of an ACS based on a large-scale collaborative autonomous robot (assumed to be a robotic arm) mounted in a mobile platform (such as a Warthog). The basic system configuration, the interfaces, and the realizability requirements driven by a formal concept-of-operations (CONOPS) diagram and known/designed system architecture. This work will be helpful in the further development, refinement, and application of this and similar systems by showing the major system architecture and formalizing the requirements for developing the system.