Hello, future. A group of autonomous flying robots – “quadcopters”- have been used in an installation by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to construct a six metre tall tower out of 1 500 foam bricks. The robots are completely autonomous, with a networked computer vision system directing the placement of the bricks.

The installation, on display at the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, is a proof-of-concept for Flight Assembled Architecture – the tower itself being a scaled model of what architects Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler are calling a “vertical village.”

“The robots fly autonomously, but they get help from the environment: The ceiling of the room where the assembly is taking place was equipped with a motion-capture system. A computer uses the vision data to keep track of the quadcopters and tell them where to go
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When a robot’s battery runs low, it automatically lands on a charger and a new quad rotor takes its place. The assembly is happening at a pace of 100 bricks per hour on average, D’Andrea says. Glue on the bottom of the bricks keeps them in place (the installation will become part of FRAC’s permanent collection).

True, you can’t control these with your iPhone, but it’s pretty incredible.

[Source: Spectrum]