14 DAY TRIAL // Drones can do everything today, and since they can synchronize fifty drones flying in swarm and act like a flock of birds, it isn't too hard to be programmed to build relatively complex structures using basic material.
In this sense, the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control and Gramazio Kohler Research managed to program two quadcopters construct a rope bridge for a human to walk on. Although the feat of the new drones has been recorded and uploaded on YouTube by researcher Federico Augugliaro, it took an entire team effort and some experience gained at the Flying Machine Arena in Zurich, Switzerland to actually have the program pulled off for such a feat.
The experiment took place in a 10-by-10-meter portable space where the drones can be observed using a high-precision motion capture system, a wireless communication network, and custom software executing sophisticated algorithms for estimation and control. These capabilities were used to control the drones in addition to custom computational tools.
In the end, the drones built the bridge autonomously, using the pre-positioned scaffolding. Spanning 7.4 m between two scaffolding structures, the bridge consists of nine rope segments for a total rope length of about 120 m and is composed of different elements, such as knots, links, and braid.
To effectively build the bridge, the two drones were outfitted with a motorized spool and plastic tubes that allowed the flying craft to release Dyneema-made rope that is a material with a low weight-to-strength ratio and thus excellent for aerial construction.
