Here Come the Robot Swarms

The EU has funded projects under a call for “autonomous robot collectives delivering collaborative tasks in dynamic unstructured construction environments.” This video from lead research Sihao Sun and team at TU Delft provides an example: three drones work together to lift an object, manipulating it impressively with cables through various obstacles on a simulated construction site. Think construction that looks like a slow motion action sequence from a super hero movie. Pretty wild.

A team including University of Bristol, TU Delft, numerous other european universities, and Foster + Partners will use the funding to apply this technique to “inverted timber fabrication,” which involves making assemblies on the ground plane before lifting them into place. The goal is to make construction safer (by reducing human labor?) and easier to execute (by working on the ground plan). Such automation reads as Fast Forward with notes of Eject. *BB-8/27/26