I think the part connection is just an implementation detail. They can make these guys place something and another robot attaches.
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
#22I like the audible menacing drone. Any autonomous robot should emit a menacing drone.
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#23Great fun, but I suspect NIMBY concerns would kill any practical application. Let's imagine they get the machines scaled to the point when they could build an actual habitable structure, and that they sort the power concerns that I suspect would make it insurmountably uneconomic. Now, imagine a squad of sufficiently large and powerful helicopters buzzing away all day next to your office . How many people are going to…
Drones don't have lives, families, or seasonal affective disorder. There's no reason they can't work at night if it's less bothersome.
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#24Great fun, but I suspect NIMBY concerns would kill any practical application. Let's imagine they get the machines scaled to the point when they could build an actual habitable structure, and that they sort the power concerns that I suspect would make it insurmountably uneconomic. Now, imagine a squad of sufficiently large and powerful helicopters buzzing away all day next to your office . How many people are going to…
Why couldn't small drones build things out of small elements? A lot of our assumptions about what is a reasonable unit of work are based on examples with humans in the loop. It might make more sense to think of a fleet of these things as a form of 3D printer.
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#25I think flying swarm rebotics would be best weaponized. You could call them hack-mans, man-chops, person-hacks...HRM
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#26This 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?
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#27Great show, but there needs to be another device (carried by the quad rotors) to create very strong bonds between the parts. If the quad rotors could carry this bond-making robot that temporarily attaches to the parts and joins pieces with adhesive/nailgun/puzzle-piece fit, then they would be on to something. Make a structure of actual use, like a tiny bridge across a moat that could hold people. The magnets have got…
Another approach would be to have a small electric lock built into the pieces. When a piece senses it is touching another piece this electric lock screws into place.
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#28robots building robots. that would be cool
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#29Pretty neat! I'm sure they'll get to it eventually, but there's no advantage to having three drones in this demo, since the work isn't pipelined. It seems that a drone has to wait until one finishes picking stuff up before it can pick up something itself.
Right, but they're saving travel time. When one drone is flying back to grab a piece, the next drone is lowering a piece into place.
Indeed. Because the work IS pipelined
Pickup --> Travel --> Deploy --> Return to pickup
Re: Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building
#30Great show, but there needs to be another device (carried by the quad rotors) to create very strong bonds between the parts. If the quad rotors could carry this bond-making robot that temporarily attaches to the parts and joins pieces with adhesive/nailgun/puzzle-piece fit, then they would be on to something. Make a structure of actual use, like a tiny bridge across a moat that could hold people. The magnets have got…
What would be cooler would be a completely separate bond-building robot that can weld / whatever and can independently traverse the completed building. When it was too far from its next destination a quadrotor would come and give it a lift.
You might have several different types of crawler. A couple to receive materials from the quadrotor and hold them in place while a third follows a weld pattern.