sciencesoup:

Flight Assembled Architecture

An art installation in Orléans, France, combines science, technology and art in an amazing way—it’s built entirely by worker-bee-like quadcopter robots. “Flight Assembled Architecture” was developed by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea in collaboration with ETH Zurich, and aims to re-imagine architecture and construction in dynamic new ways. The team of agile flying robots work together to assemble a 6 m high tower of 1,500 polystyrene blocks, which is actually a scale structure of a conceptual 600 m high “vertical village”. It’s built in 10 cubic metres of airspace filled with motion capture sensors to track the robots, who are programmed to interact, lift, transport and assemble the structure via commands from a control module. Defense programs are also exploring the benefits of using swarm technologies and automated robots, perhaps to build bases or relief centres before humans arrive—so this is not only a brilliant art installation, but also a window to the future.

Check out the ETH website to see the fleet in action