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Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

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Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#71

Post by eftpotrm »

burgerbrain wrote: post #58
eftpotrm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things don't look very powerful, to put it mildly. GPS means outdoors which means wind which is a bit harder for a small, light hovering robot to handle. Indoor lets them demonstrate the principle with a useful simplifying assumption of no wind.

Did you watch the same videos I did? They have these things lifting sizeable pieces of 2x4's ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBsJwapanWI ) and they pull of some pretty absurd manoeuvring ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM ) and recovery ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geqip_0Vjec ). Navigational issues resolved, I have a hard time seeing these things having trouble with a modest wind.

Yes, I did see the same videos. And I still think no wind is a useful simplifying assumption for them, particularly on power grounds.

A constant wind I agree looks like it would be within their capabilities, though their route planning software would need to take account of it and approach the target from upwind by default - not impossible but another thing to account for.

The real issue for me is gusting. They are definitely small and light enough that power-to-weight issues, particularly when carrying a load with a higher surface area to the wind than the craft itself, means that it will get knocked off course by gusts. That obviously needs allowing for when navigating to and from the construction site, but particularly when dropping off a load - if the release comes at the same point as the gust, the part simply won't end up where they wanted.

Do I think all of these problems are unsolvable? No, but it makes a useful simplifying assumption for their version 1 that they don't have to deal with any of them because they're flying indoors.

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#72

Post by eftpotrm »

philwelch wrote: post #54
eftpotrm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live next to a small industrial estate, my employers's campus location has houses the other side of the road and behind some trees from memory. Offices often have bars and restaurants around them which do good trade in the evening, sometimes city centre apartments mixed in too. I certainly follow the principle but I think there's less urban clear 'this time is OK' areas than you might think, low enough to further p…

Not all techniques are appropriate for everything. (General rule.)

Agreed, I'm just saying that between noise, safety and simple powering concerns, I think the window for this being superior to current methods is very, very small.

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#73

Post by sliverstorm »

andrewcooke wrote: post #37

I'm going to be a pedant here - that does not look like a swarm, and they don't claim it is (in the video, at least). By "swarm" I would understand that all have the same programming and that the assembly process is emergent from simpler instructions plus exploration and feedback. Instead they appear to be programmed to act sequentially with a pre-planned set of actions. There is no feedback, no emergence. In short,…

Hey, you can't have emergent properties before you have foundation properties. Can't build a building with magical emergent properties if you don't first figure out how to make a bot that can lift the beams.

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#74

Post by nitrogen »

jerf wrote: post #41
brudgers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4x8 sheet of 1/2" Gypsum board weighs nearly 60 pounds. A five gallon bucket of paint weighs about the same. A quadrotor couldn't finish an office because it would be too large to fit through the door...never mind the rotating blades.

You're right. But. As robotics becomes practical for building, we will not just replace human with robots. We will change how we build to make it easier to build with robots. For instance, I was noticing that while you might not want to use magnets for everything in your building, you could use them as a guide during that intermediate period where the robot can't just put things together, but they can be mostly corre…

I suspect that protectionism will delay the "robot revolution" long past the time when it's technologically feasible. Building codes will be changed in some way to require human labor, building material suppliers will be pressured to "run out of" the parts needed by robot builders, etc. It's been my experience that few people outside of tech actually like the idea of robots doing anything that a human could do.

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#75

Post by thalur »

sliverstorm wrote: post #26
yellowbkpk wrote: post #12

This lab has several other videos with quad rotor robots like this (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM ), but don't worry about them escaping and starting a robot domination: they rely on infrared motion capture systems in that room for extremely precise location sensing. Once GPS gets sub-meter accuracy, then we should start worrying.

GPS + Accelerometer is already pretty darn accurate, I'm not really sure why they use the IR room. Perhaps simply easier to set up, and easier to co-ordinate the bots?

Depending on which waveband you use, different vision tasks become a lot easier. It looks to me like all the sensing is done by the room, not the quadrotors, hence why its all room-mounted.

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#76

Post by netcan »

d5tryr wrote: post #45

I've been cleaning up after a flood disaster for the past few days, the most amazing technology i've seen in that time is the bobcats and their drivers. It takes 10-15 people a few hours to empty a house of all it's waterlogged belongings on to the street, and then 15 minutes for the bobcat to get it up on the back of a truck. When I see a tech demo like this I'm very optimistic about it's potential for disaster reli…

Brisbane?

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#77

Post by qntm »

mixmax wrote: post #15
mitko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say makes sense - robotic cranes should be able to operate with heavier pieces, and will require less energy per piece placement. However, MAVs (micro air vehicles) could reach into places where cranes wouldn't be able - i.e. inside the building. Also you can have many more MAVs working at the same time than cranes, so MAVs might be able to considerably speed up the building process.

They're also a lot easier to move and set up than cranes.

Use the drones to build the cranes!

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#78

Post by BrandonM »

siculars wrote: post #31

Wow, unions are gonna hate these.

The shortsightedness of people worried about fewer jobs because of new technology is ridiculous. If you can build a house for the cost of land and materials only, the cost of living is lowered for everyone. With enough advancement and automation, the cost of life's necessities drops. As it decreases, the amount of human labor necessary to support day-to-day life will drop with it. Eventually we'll be able to support ourselves with very little laborious work, focusing instead on content production and other interesting and creative endeavors. Why try to prevent that?

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#79

Post by mturmon »

jerf wrote: post #41
brudgers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4x8 sheet of 1/2" Gypsum board weighs nearly 60 pounds. A five gallon bucket of paint weighs about the same. A quadrotor couldn't finish an office because it would be too large to fit through the door...never mind the rotating blades.

You're right. But. As robotics becomes practical for building, we will not just replace human with robots. We will change how we build to make it easier to build with robots. For instance, I was noticing that while you might not want to use magnets for everything in your building, you could use them as a guide during that intermediate period where the robot can't just put things together, but they can be mostly corre…

It's funny, people have been talking about prefab houses (related, but not the same, as on-site robotic assembly) for years, but they still are a niche item. Despite all kinds of efforts to popularize them, such as:

http://www.dwell.com/magazine/the-prefab-issue.html

Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building

#80

Post by JoeAltmaier »

BrandonM wrote: post #78
siculars wrote: post #31

Wow, unions are gonna hate these.

The shortsightedness of people worried about fewer jobs because of new technology is ridiculous. If you can build a house for the cost of land and materials only, the cost of living is lowered for everyone. With enough advancement and automation, the cost of life's necessities drops. As it decreases, the amount of human labor necessary to support day-to-day life will drop with it. Eventually we'll be able to support…

Its Capitalism when everyone works for themselves (ok, the money works for them).

Its Socialism when we all work for the collective.

What do you call it when nobody works?

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