NASA is working to develop autonomous construction systems for future deep-space missions.

NASA's Automated Reconfigurable Mission Adaptive Digital Assembly Systems (ARMADAS) team has developed a system that combines robots, structural building blocks and smart algorithms to build large-scale structures in space.

Source: NASA/Dominic Hart

Recognizing the need for on-site infrastructure construction as NASA conducts prolonged missions to the Moon and Mars, for instance, ARMADAS’ system is expected to be capable of autonomously building and maintaining structures in space. This will likely avoid challenges such as sending pre-assembled hardware — like solar power stations, communication towers and crew habitats — from Earth.

In the lab, the ARMADAS team demonstrated the system with three inchworm-like robots working together to build a meters-scale shelter-like shed structure using hundreds of building blocks.

To accomplish this, the ARMADAS team used an approach dubbed "digital assembly systems,” wherein the system uses 3D-building blocks called voxels to build different structures.

According to the researchers, the voxels used in the lab are strong and lightweight composite materials, such as a cuboctahedron.

"We turn [the challenge of operating in unstructured environments] on its head by making very simple and reliable robots that operate in an extremely structured lattice environment."

The trial demonstrated how the robots are able to follow planned structures autonomously while software algorithms manage their tasks.