Path Planning for Direct Energy Deposition with Collaborative Robots: A Review

This paper discusses the issues and opportunities in using stand-alone and collaborative robots in Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. Recently, the six-axes robots are beginning to find its use in many AM processes for the production of complex shapes and increasing the productivity. These robots help to overcome the challenges in CNC based system and to address various complexities that are unique for AM parts. In this paper, we investigate the different path planning patterns used in the past and their application to robotic based AM processes. We also propose methods of path planning for Collaborative Robots (CoBots) to build parts quickly. The work presented in this paper would be useful for the aerospace and automotive industries when CoBots are adopted to speed-up their AM processes.