
Aerial Construction – Building structures with flying machines - voska
http://www.idsc.ethz.ch/research-dandrea/research-projects/aerial-construction.html
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kctess5
I'm pretty impressed how the rotors always stayed away from the ropes. There
must be some very interesting pathing algorithms in those.

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earlyadapter
With regard to line of sight and commercial drone operations in the US, POTUS
issued a memo for the FAA and related govt agencies to figure out how to
safely integrate UAVs into the NAS (National Air Space). The most immediate
result has been the FAA's issuance of Section 333 Exemptions.

Within the Section 333 Exemption there is language regarding being able to see
the drones that specifically states: the UA must be operated within VSOL
(visual line of flight) of the Pilot in Command and all operations must use a
Visual Observer; the UA must remain within VSOL of the visual oberserver; and
the VO and PIC must be able to communicate verbally at all times (precludes
texting or e messaging) during the flight.

The FAA has gone even further by requiring PICs be actual FAA licensed pilots.

This language works well for most commercial uses (construction, agriculture
and photography) but virtually kills Amazon's hopes for an unmanned delivery
network.

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etrautmann
I was prepared to be skeptical but this is actually pretty cool. The thing
that's never discussed, however, is that these demonstrations _always_ require
fast, accurate, and external motion capture systems (Vicon, etc), and wouldn't
work outdoors. I'm not aware of anything that is currently available that will
get close to this level of speed and accuracy for vehicle state estimation,
which will make it very difficult to apply these techniques in real world
situations.

Very cool proof of concept though.

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hliyan
If larger drones become reliable enough, maybe the construction industry can
do away with cranes and scaffoldings.

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venomsnake
If you make the object from lego bricks probably.

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jamessb
The same team has previously done work using drones to build structures out of
bricks (rather than ropes):

[http://www.idsc.ethz.ch/research-dandrea/research-
projects/a...](http://www.idsc.ethz.ch/research-dandrea/research-
projects/archive/flying-machine-enabled-construction.html)

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/video-
watch-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/video-watch-flying-
robots-build-a-6-meter-tower)

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callesgg
Want to see this in the wild it seams to me that doing it in a room with
camera sensors are reducing the complexity to much.

Not to mention the usefulness.

The scenario i would like to see is: I am out hiking and want to get over a
river, take my drone out of my backpack attach a rope and let it build a
bridge.

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callesgg
That is external cameras used for sensors...

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mrwilliamchang
This looks like a good plot twist for a movie.

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/19/watch-these-drones-
build-...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/19/watch-these-drones-build-a-rope-
bridge/), which points to this.

