Teams of aerial drones might one day help to build houses Flying robots could be the answer to the challenge of building structures in remote locations or hard-to-reach spots, according to engineers who have developed a drone-based approach to 3D printing. Aerial additive manufacturing with multiple autonomous robots Aerial additive manufacturing with multiple autonomous robots. …
The big problem will be product strength, as there's no way to consolidate when 3D printing. Especially in the case of concrete, the majority of the finished strength results from compaction after pouring. And in the case of metals, the result of 3D printing is sintered (fused powder) which is both weaker and more porous than melted or extruded metal. So applications of 3D printing to building will be limited mostly to non-load bearing structures and infills. So there's a lot of potential but only in the right places.
Not to mention that it seems most of the time, work and energy goes into preparing the ground and installing/connecting to the local infrastructure. Seeing new housing estate go up, it seems like months from first breaking ground to staring on building the house. Next thing you know the houses are finished and people are moving in, The actual build process seems to be shortest part.
I suppose if it's a small, off-grid, single story building in a hard to reach place and you don't want foundations, then it might work as described. Other than that, it might work eventually, some way down the dev process. I suspect, more likely, it will lead to other developments in other fields.
to take you to the fully auto-drone-dox, they'd probably first need to chop you up to small bits with their drone jaws (conveniently called 'man-dibles'). Though they might take you, instead, to the nearest field, as fertilizer, what's not to like?!
Great. Can't wait wait to move into my new cylinder. Shame I'm slightly too tall for it, but I'm sure some sort of easily fitted canvas roof extension will be available too. Alternatively, wait to announce that these things can build a house until they've actually built a house.
Please make it stop. 3D printing is marvelous for some applications. It sucks at building buildings. Adding drones just makes it suck more. It doesn't do good roofs or doors or windows and it doesn't do any of the things that are needed to complete a building (like hanging doors and windows much less wiring).
It's like the computing debate of "does it run Doom?" where the answer is "yes" but the real answer is "why would you want to?"
I could not see beyond the paywall, but the summary linked-to indicated that two drones at a time could work on a project.
From my vague (probably-supressed) memories of seeing all-too-much wasp activity as a child, I believe more-than-two wasps can simultaneously work on a building project.
Can more-than-two drones simultaneously work on a building project if that project is big enough to use more than two drones at a time? I'm asking about the capabilities of the drone-control software.
Whilst the article refers to 3D printing and points to a Wikipedia page, the same was essentially covered in an earlier article...
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