Okay, so maybe the title was a tad melodramatic, but this week a video aired of a rope bridge, capable of bearing a person’s weight, being assembled by a team of programmed drones – now tell me that doesn’t sound like “War of the Worlds”?
A drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and in recent times, completely unable of escaping the attention of the news, and usually not for their positive contribution to society either. Drones are obviously and infamously known for their involvement in military operations, but their abilities are broadening, as they are now involved in a number of civil, as well as recreational applications. But, I won’t DRONE on about that now; I’m sorry, that wasn’t even REMOTEly funny.
Whilst looking a bit like the rope assault course you might try at “GoApe”, the bridge – shown in the video below – was assembled at the ‘ETH Zurich Flying Machine Arena’ in Switzerland, by 3 quadcopter drones! The rope can bear the weight of one person, wonderfully demonstrated by the team at the end of the video.
This research topic was but a small step towards the feat of aerial construction, posing huge implications for the future of engineering and development.
While this is a ridiculously cool research project, the facts must be faced. The three drones were manually programmed to create this bridge, throwing any ideas of spontaneity (for example, in applications of search and rescue), out of the window. Also, are we supposed to ignore the fact that the foundation of the entire bridge, lies in the pre-built scaffolding either side of this structure? Creating a rope bridge, capable of bearing the weight of 70kg is one thing, building a skyscraper is on a whole other level – a whole other 50 floor levels to be exact. At this point in time, the usability of drones in construction is comparable to a travel hammock that I bought from Amazon over the summer. It is a completely snazzy idea, amazing ideals, but did I find a suitable location in which to suspend and mount my hammock? Absolutely not, nature is not that kind. So without two perfectly located and fitting anchor points, the use of drones would be completely impractical.
The Aerial Construction project discussed these limitations, stating that they expect their work to create entirely new forms of architecture methods, and that their project was merely focused on “human-quadrocopter interaction” as well as considering the possibility of “aerial assembly of tensile structures”. What a time to be alive!
Before I offend everyone with my seemingly narrow mindedness, I must admit – there is no doubt that this is an amazing step in the field of aerial robotics, and I, myself, am well and truly impressed. But there is a long way to go before we can sack our labourers and turn towards programmed robotics for assistance. This is after all, only preliminary research, but the future implications of this exploration are almost endless.
This is truly one small step for drones and one equally small step for mankind.