NASA 3D Printed Habitat

Summary

Associated with: AMBOTS, Inc.

Role: Co-Founder, R&D Project Manager.

Where: Fayetteville, Arkansas.

When: 2018.

Objective: Develop an algorithm for 3D printing and assembling modular habitats on Mars using local materials. All of which should be done by a robotic arm inside a mobile printer module.

Contribution: I contributed to the development of the print-and-assembly algorithm, which directly impacted the overall design of the habitats. The algorithm was validated on a 3D model in Blender using Python, in addition to a small-scale print job performed on a multi-material 3D printer.

Results:

• The algorithm was successfully implemented and validated.

• Team Zopherus won 2ⁿᵈ place in the competition.

Project Description

The 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge was a NASA’s Centennial Challenges program competition to build a 3D-printed habitat for deep space exploration, including the agency’s journey to the Moon, Mars or beyond. The multi-phase challenge was designed to advance the construction technology needed to create sustainable housing solutions for Earth and beyond. The competition, completed in 2019, awarded a total of US$ 2,061,023.

Phase III

The last phase of the competition challenged competitors to fabricate sub-scale habitats, and had five levels of competition – three construction levels and two virtual levels. For the virtual levels, teams used Building Information Modeling software to design a habitat that combined allowances for both the structure and systems it must contain. The construction levels challenged the teams to autonomously 3D-print elements of the habitat, culminating with a one-third-scale printed habitat for the final level. (US$ 3.15M prize purse/ US$ 2M awarded).

Team Zopherus

I joined Team Zopherus, from Arkansas, as a Subject Matter Expert in 3D printing. One of my main contributions to the project was to help building the print-and-assembly algorithm that defines the order in which different materials are printed. It also incorporates a pick-and-place sequence for pre-assembled components, all of which is done by a robotic arm inside the mobile printer module. A portion of this work can be seen in the final submission video bellow (minute 1:17).

Team Zopherus was the second place winner in Phase 3: Level 4 software modeling stage of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. The team’s design includes using a moving printer that deploys rovers to retrieve local materials. The design would be constructed by an autonomous roving printer that prints a structure on Mars.