Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh

Link includes a video showing the robots in action. “If fiberglass tubes suddenly started to sprout out of the ground, you might think you had stumbled on some alien invasion. But such tubes are a real thing, woven by newly developed autonomous robots to create large structures such as bridges and temporary shelters—with minimal human input.

Each “Fiberbot” has a winding arm that pulls fiber from a tank on the ground, mixes the materials in a nozzle, and winds the wetted fiber around itself like a silkworm cocooning. Next, the robot turns on an ultraviolet light to cook the fiber into a hard tube. Then, it deflates its body and uses a tiny motor and wheels to inch itself up on top of the hardened fiber, where the process begins again.

The robots can tilt and use different winding patterns to vary the thickness and the direction of the tubes. As they build, the Fiberbots communicate with each other through a computer network to avoid running into each other or other obstacles. Together, they can calculate the most efficient way to build a given structure.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/watch-these-alienlike-robots-weave-bus-size-fiberglass-structure-all-themselves?utm_source=newsfromscience&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=alienrobotsmakeglassstuff-21801