Abstract
The research presented here investigates techniques and tools for design and fabrication of tensile structures with flying robots. Tensile aggregations are described as a concatenation of nodes and links. Computational tools provide the designer of such a structure with the necessary aid to simulate, sequence and evaluate a design before fabrication. Using a prototypical suspension footbridge as an example, this paper describes the techniques and challenges for implementing the construction method on a full-scale, loadbearing, architectural artefact. Firstly, a series of tensile links is fabricated at defined lengths between two distant support structures to build the primary elements of the bridge. Secondly, cooperating flying robots brace the assembly by braiding the primary elements to one another. And finally, the structure is stabilized through the fabrication of additional connections by robots flying around existing elements within the porous structure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Augugliaro, F, Zarfati, E, Mirjan, A and D’Andrea, R 2015, ‘Knot-tying with Flying Machines for Aerial Construction’, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
Augugliaro, F, Lupashin, S, Hamer, M, Male, C, Hehn, M, Mueller, MW, Will-mann, J, Gramazio, F, Kohler, M and D’Andrea, R 2014, ‘The Flight Assembled Architecture installation: Cooperative construction with flying machines’, IEEE Control Systems, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 46–64.
Augugliaro, F, Mirjan, A, Gramazio, F, Kohler, M and D’Andrea, R 2013, ‘Building tensile structures with flying machines’, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3487–3492.
Hunt, G, Mitzalis, F, Alhinai, T, Hooper, PA and Kovac, M 2014, ‘3D printing with flying robots’, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4493–4499.
Kilian, A and Ochsendorf, J 2005, ‘Particle Spring Systems for Structural Form Finding’, Journal of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 77–84.
Kohler, M 2012, ‘Aerial Architecture’, LOG, no. 25, pp. 23–30.
Larsen, JL 1987, Interlacing: The Elemental Fabric, Kodansha International, New York.
Lindsey, Q and Kumar, V 2013, ‘Distributed Construction of Truss Structures’, in Frazzoli, E, Lozano-Perez, T, Roy, N and Rus, D (eds), Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics X, ser. Springer Tracts, Advanced Robotics, vol. 86, pp. 209–225.
Lupashin, S, Hehn, M, Mueller, MW, Schoellig, AP, Sherback, M and D’Andrea, R 2014, ‘A platform for aerial robotics research and demonstration: The Flying Machine Arena’, Mechatronics, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1–54.
Mirjan, A, Gramazio, F and Kohler, M 2014a, ‘Building with Flying Robots’ in Gramazio, F, Kohler, M and Langenberg, S (eds), Fabricate: Negotiating Design and Making, gta-Verlag, Zurich, pp. 266–271.
Mirjan, A, Willmann, J, Gramazio, F and Kohler, M 2014b, ‘Designing Behaviour: Materializing Architecture with Flying Machines’, GAM, no. 10, pp. 236–47.
Mirjan, A, Gramazio, F, Kohler, M, Augugliaro, F, D’Andrea, R 2013, ‘Architectural fabrication of tensile structures with flying machines’, in Bártolo, H et al. (eds), Green Design, Materials and Manufacturing Process, CRC Press, Boca Raton FL, pp. 513–518.
Stam, J 2009, ‘Nucleus: Towards a unified dynamics solver for computer graphics’, Computer-Aided Design and Computer Graphics, 11th IEEE International Conference, pp. 1–11, 19–21.
Willmann, J, Augugliaro, F, Cadalbert, T, D’Andrea, R, Gramazio, F and Kohler, M 2012, ‘Aerial Robotic Construction Towards a New Field of Architectural Re-search’, International Journal of Architectural Computing, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 439–460.
Acknowledgments
The research presented here is based on a collaboration between the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control and Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich. The experiments shown here are performed in the Flying Machine Arena [3] at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich. The work is supported by the Hartmann Mueller-Fonds on ETH Research Grant ETH-30 12-1. A special thanks goes to Augusto Gandia and Maximilian Schulz who have contributed to the work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mirjan, A., Augugliaro, F., D’Andrea, R., Gramazio, F., Kohler, M. (2016). Building a Bridge with Flying Robots. In: Reinhardt, D., Saunders, R., Burry, J. (eds) Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26378-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26378-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26376-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26378-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)