ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses emerging trends in Additive manufacturing (AM) from a robot cist’s perspective, although the relevance extends to the fabrication of other mechatronic devices. Modern day electronics have developed from the early days of through-hole components, creating smaller and smaller integrated circuit chips and other components. Development from this work allowed a separate group to make a multiple process system capable of embedding small integrated circuit chips within printed parts. AM is one of the most important technological developments of recent years, revolutionizing the way engineers design and build new devices. It is clear that multimaterial AM has the potential to allow in situ manufacturing of sensor elements. The researchers successfully embedded simple metal components such as fastenings and mechanical shafts, allowing them to make a compact bespoke robotic platform requiring minimal postassembly. AM has already had an enormous impact in design and manufacturing and shows the potential to one day allow fully automatic fabrication of complex mechatronic devices.
