Watch flying robots build a 6-meter tower
December 14, 2011
A quadrotor just before a precision landing on a brick (credit: Markus Waibel/ETH Zurich)
ETH Zurich roboticists and architects used a fleet of quadcopters to build a 6 meter (20 feet) twisting tower out of 1500 foam bricks, IEEE Spectrum Automaton reports.
The ceiling of the room where the assembly is taking place was equipped with a motion-capture system. A computer uses the vision data to keep track of the quadcopters and tell them where to go.
First, the robots grab foam bricks from a special brick dispenser on the ground. Next the quadcopters receive the exact coordinates of where the bricks should go based on a detailed digital blueprint of the tower. Then they fly off. (Credit: Markus Waibel/ETH Zurich)