Drone swarm prints building materials in flight
The Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute has developed a swarm of drones based on the model of bees that cooperatively print and place 3D materials in flight. These BuilDrones are monitored by ScanDrones.
An international research team from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research ( Empa ) has developed a swarm of cooperative drones that are used in construction. The example is the cooperation between bees and wasps. As Empa reports , the flying robots print out 3D materials in the air under human control and place them in the designated places. The performance of these BuilDrones is recorded and monitored by a second fleet, the ScanDrones. They also specify the upcoming production steps.
Empa also demonstrates in a video that this is the first time that such a detailed 3D print has been carried out by a free-flying robot. The specialist journal “Nature” published the study by Professor Mirko Kovac’s team from the Materials and Technology Center of Robotics online on September 21 and made it the cover story of its latest issue of September 22 .
The so-called aerial additive manufacturing is designed in such a way that the drones can adapt their activity to the different geometries of the structure during the construction process. They act autonomously during their deployment. A human controller observes the process and makes adjustments as necessary based on the information provided by the drones.
“We have demonstrated that the drones can work autonomously to construct and repair buildings, at least in the laboratory,” Kovac is quoted as saying. This could make it easier to work in hard-to-reach areas such as high-rise buildings. According to Empa, the experts now want to work together with construction companies to validate the solutions developed in practice and to develop new repair and production options.