Marsha
A 3D-printed habitat for Mars
Marsha was AI Spacefactory’s proposal for NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. The design was borne out of a response to the Martian environment, and features a vertically-oriented egg-shaped shell, containing four interior levels. The design of Marsha is meant to humanize the experience of living on another planet and provide a space for occupants. The competition involved the design and construction of a Martian habitat prototype. My role was Head of Computation, which included robotics programming and tool-pathing.
The goal of the competition was to develop an autonomous printing system and print a one-third scale artifact that represented our habitat design. Our final printed object was over 15 feet tall, which was the tallest ever 3D-printed object in the world, to our knowledge.
Our 3D-printing system consisted of an industrial robot arm mounted on a modified forklift. The robot arm carried a custom extruder that deposited melted material along a specified toolpath.
Our team won the competition, completing the shell with seconds to spare and securing the $500,000 prize.
Our experience at the competition was also profiled in the YouTube documentary series Age of A.I., which explores different applications of artificial intelligence. Though we didn’t use any artificial intelligence technologies on the Marsha print, the documentary was still interested in the effect our project could have on the future of the built environment.
For more info on the process of robot tool pathing and programming, click here.
Project Credits
Prototype Phase 1
Jeffrey Montes - Team Lead
Christopher James Botham - Automation / Robotics
David Malott - CEO
David Riedel - Logistics
Prototype Phase 2
Jeffrey Montes - Team Lead
Christopher James Botham - Automation / Robotics
David Malott - CEO
David Riedel - Logistics
Prototype Phase 3
Jeffrey Montes - Team Lead
Christopher James Botham - Automation / Robotics
James Earle - Engineering
James Coleman - Systems Integration
David Riedel - Logistics