Our work on autonomous aerial 3D printing featured in 3D Printing Industry
The recent publication titled “Fully Autonomous Chunk‑Based Aerial Additive Manufacturing with Offset‑Free Predictive Control” by Marios Nektarios Stamatopoulos, Jakub Haluska, Elias Small, Jude Marroush, Avijit Banerjee and George Nikolakopoulos has been featured on the 3D Printing Industry website.
The article describes how the Robotics and AI group at Luleå University of Technology developed a system that decomposes CAD models into “chunks,” arranged in a dependency graph and allocated to drones for autonomous printing. A custom hexacopter equipped with a pressurized canister of polyurethane foam extrudes material along paths generated by Cura slicer software.
To ensure precision, the framework incorporates a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) with disturbance estimation to account for airflow, changing payload weight, and ground effects.
Experiments carried out in a motion-capture indoor arena demonstrated successful printing of two geometries, each divided into eight chunks. Protective skirts and interlocking stair-step patterns were used to improve stability and adhesion. Tracking errors were within 2–6 cm, with voxel-based analysis confirming close adherence to the planned designs.
Future directions include extending the framework to multiple UAVs, exploring stronger materials, and refining material flow control under different environmental conditions.
