Aerial Additive Manufacturing for the future of construction

Training an entire team of hard-working construction workers who neither need breaks nor claim their wages and who work incredibly precisely and quickly, even in hard-to-reach places, sounds almost too good to be true. But it is, at least according to the developers of Aerial Additive Manufacturing. These construction drones really do have a lot to offer.

Today, drones are mainly used to deliver small packages and for surveillance. But soon they could do much more, for example build houses and industrial buildings. Why should they? Simply because they are fast, cheap, effective and can counteract the labour shortage. So many positive qualities for an industry that is weakening, it just has to work. At least that’s what the developers are sure of, and they have big plans for the electronic helpers, whose way of working is more reminiscent of bees than robots.

The positive features of Aerial Additive Manufacturing

The wonder drones were developed by a team of researchers led by Mirko Kovac. He not only heads the Materials and Technology Center of Robotics, but also conducts research on this very topic at Imperial College London. His vision, which he reports in the science magazine “Nature”, is drones that will act like worker bees in the future and are trained to complete construction projects for this purpose. They can take on different tasks, such as connecting small parts, inserting components, plastering facades and much more. The advantage here would be obvious: drones do not get tired of their work and do not need breaks. Moreover, they would even be able to reach places that are simply difficult for humans to reach and would make the entire process very strenuous and time-consuming.

Which drones are there and what do they do?

The name of the system is “Aerial Additive Manufacturing” (Aerial-Am for short). It consists of a whole fleet of industrious drones that have been programmed to perform different tasks during the construction project. Two types of drones form the basic structure. “BuilDrones” 3D print the required components, while “ScanDrones” place them where they are intended according to the construction plan. The drones are equipped with artificial intelligence, which means they learn to adapt to the geometries and their changes during the building process. They do this autonomously. All it takes is a human to control the work and ensure that all the drones remain fully operational and that no technical errors occur. The human “controller” can make small adjustments based on the drone data supplied.

Precise and conscientious work has only worked in the lab so far

The components themselves consist of no less than four mixtures that are very similar to normal cement. Test prints initially turned out cylindrical and consisted of many layers of a special new building material based on polyurethane, a foam compound. It is important that the drones always take the greatest care in the composition of the components. Therefore, they must be able to immediately evaluate every single step of the process and adjust their behaviour according to the new conditions. The accuracy here corresponds to five millimetres. They must not deviate more from the plan so that everything holds and becomes stable. The concept has worked very well in the lab so far. The researchers do not yet know how the drones will perform in the field, because the technology has not yet been tested there. However, initial tests in the lab make them confident that this technology could be the future of an entire industry.

You can find more articles on the topic of the construction industry in the future here:

Building materials of the future

Circular construction in the future

Cube: First carbon concrete building

Image copyright: mahod84

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