14 DAY TRIAL // A group of student architects from the Creative Architecture Machines studio at California College of the Arts in the Digital Craft Lab have created the Swarmscapers, robots that can build anything you tell them to, as well as the tools they may need to do it.
The idea of robot-based construction work is an old one, but where once it was about human-like contraptions and cyborgs, now it's about swarms of little machines working like ants.
It's like the concept of construction nanites, which is basically this idea of cooperating robots taken to the logical extreme.
The Swarmscapers could, in theory, excavate materials, compile them, build the tools needed to construct a structure (via 3D printing) and then proceed to lay the foundation and build the buildings themselves (again, via 3D printing).
You can probably imagine what could be achieved this way. Creating buildings on, say, the surface of Mars could theoretically be accomplished as soon as the Swarmscapers come off the assembly line.
Not that they're built any more conventionally than they do their jobs. In fact, almost all the parts are 3D printed, including the wheel cogs.
Metal parts, washers, and nuts were only needed for the assembly, along with aluminum sleeves and zip ties. That leaves the electronic components as the only other non-3D-printed sections: Adafruit LiPo chargers, 2000 maH LiPo batteries, One DC Voltage converter.
There is a more advanced swarmscaper, which boasts the following: one Arduino Uno, Adafruit battery shield and LiPo battery, Two X-Bee Series 1, an X-Bee shield, X-Bee USB adapter, H-bridge motor controller, and a Mosfet transistor (controls the peristaltic pump).
The video below shows the Swarmscapers at work. A large scale test with different materials and binding agents is being prepared. In the meantime, you can build one yourself by following the Instructables.
