Embedded Intelligence for a Low-Altitude Circular Economy: A Framework Fusing 3D Printing and Drone Swarms

As the low-altitude economy expands, driven by advancements in drone technology and additive manufacturing (3D printing), it faces significant environmental challenges, particularly increasing carbon emissions and hardware waste. These issues arise from the rapid growth and disposal of hardware in autonomous systems, which requires efficient and sustainable solutions. This paper introduces a novel Low-altitude Circular Economy Embedded Intelligence (LaSEE) framework, designed to address these challenges through the integration of drone swarms, 3D printing technology, and AI. The framework consists of three core components: the AI core, which makes real-time decisions based on comprehensive task analysis; 3D printing platforms, which manufacture and repair drone components on demand; and drone swarms, which collaborate to execute complex cross-domain tasks. These components work together to ensure efficient operations while minimizing waste, contributing to sustainability in the low-altitude economy. This novel framework offers a transformative solution by reducing environmental impact and enhancing operational flexibility, paving the way for a sustainable and adaptive future in autonomous systems. In addition, we explicitly incorporate hardware reliability, operational safety, and lifecycle cost into the AI-driven scheduling loop, thereby making the framework explicitly deployment-oriented for real-world low-altitude scenarios.