Flying Robots Building The Future. Multicopter carried Foam Brick to construction site.

Flying Robots building the future? It may sound impossible but tiny robot multi-copters are already being used to make buildings. A Swiss team of scientist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology demonstrated the future of construction in France in late 2011.  A team of several robot multi-copters flew foam bricks into position , while avoiding each other and constructed a building wall.

The tiny flying robots appeared to use a vacuum suction device to hold the brick in place while in flight. Once the robot has successfully flown to the target location it lands and then releases the block and flies away to gather it’s next brick.

The Foreman: virtual building site software - controls many flying robots

A computer program called “The Foreman” co-ordinates the flight paths and air traffic control of the flying robots. The foreman has a three dimensional representation of the virtual construction area, which it uses to plot flight plans. The Foreman can control multiple Robots at the same time and work on multiple buildings at the same time. The Foreman also directs the multi-copters to take a break and recharge their batteries. One interesting features of these Flying, Robot’s building projects is that they look organic. The building walls can have compound curves and wave like shapes. Building this way does not limit you to conventional right angle walls. This could have wide reaching implications in the field of architecture and design.

Flying Robots built this Futuristic Tower

Multicopters are not new technology, I remember flying one of the first commercially available models: “The Roswell Flyer” back in 1998. Since then, advances in electronics and sensors have allowed the creation of smaller more powerful computer brains. Recent development by companies like DIYDrones has brought multi-copters to the masses. DIY Drones offers Arduino powered Robot Brains which make multi-copter flight possible thanks to gyroscopes, GPS and accelerometers. The Ardupilot board makes it a simple matter to build your own flying robots. Larger multicopter are also being built including a human piloted version, the e-volo. In October 2011 a group of German innovators flew the e-volo successfully. You can read more about the e-volo herein Maker Masters.

SmartBird is a Robotic Seagull made of Carbon fiber.

Other Flying robots currently in development include the Smartbird Robotic Seagull from Festo. The SmartBird flaps it’s wings and moves it’s head and tail to mimic the flight of real seagulls. The SmartBird Ornithopter weighs less than one pound and is made of Carbon fiber and composite materials. The SmartBird’s light weight makes it perfect for indoor flying. The flying Robot was recently demonstrated at the Ted Talks. It is clear that the increased popularity of Multicopters will see them being used in a variety of new ways. To date multicopter flying robots have been used for aerial photography, sports photography, geographic mapping, weather data collection, human flight and as sensor platforms. This new unique use of multicopter flying robots in building construction may be critical in the development of buildings in the future. If you would like to know more about Flying Robots and Multicopters please leave a comment below.

Sources: Reuters News DIYDRONES e-volo  Makermasters Ted Talks