This is completely awesome. And honestly it seems more impressive then when I watch the robots from Willow Garage make pancakes.

You can really see how these could have the speed and dexterity to be useful very soon.

I for one welcome our flying insect overlords.

@bunedoggle Q: How do you know someone gets to hang around Willow Garage? A: They tell you.

Suddenly the remote controlled helicopter I got for xmas doesn’t seem quite so awesome ;)

That is just super-cool. Well done!

While this is very impressive (the recent surge in quadrotor projects is always impressive), I don’t see how this can possibly make building structures any more efficient. A quadrotor, or crew of quadrotors, lifting a given building component into place will require substantially more energy than a crane doing the same thing, and be more complex and therefore more failure-prone. I can imagine this sort of technology being useful in certain circumstances, like lifting parts of an observatory to the top of an inhospitable mountain. It just doesn’t make much sense for building a house.

It’s going to be less energy efficient, but more time efficient because of the autonomous component, and at some point, I bet energy is going to be super cheap while human time is going to be expensive.

Wow, this is really an interesting project!
Nice work.

Amazing work, I love projects like these. It’s totally cool to imagine the possibilities. Something like this could and probably will one day change modern construction. It’s sort of like a 3D printer for large structures. For example, when trying to build a house ….

1. Energy Consumption

Theoretically you could have enough quad-rotors on hand to keep a constant cycle working while others are powering up via solar power. Even electric charging may not be terribly bad depending on how time-efficient the quad-rotors are at building a structure. Charging can be wireless using technology such as Qi which is already a reality for consumers right now. It’s easy to imagine charging landing pads that require no physical plugging in.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20016118-1.html

2. Building Materials

It’s clear that most normal building materials would not work as they are. Smaller more well designed materials would need to be used to create stable structures while still being light enough for the machines to carry them. I see lego housing in our future :) . In certain instances multiple quad-rotors may have to work in tandem to position larger materials.

3. Electrical Wiring, Plumbing, and Air Conditioning / Heating

Obviously the most important part of an undertaking like this would be the in-depth planning and procedures. Unlike human error which can often be corrected by quick human analysis, machines are for all-intensive purposes “stupid”. If a problem occurs they will continue about their business oblivious unless otherwise told to check for specific problems. If you want to accomodate all of the “guts” of a house then these things will need to be built into the materials the machines are placing or spaced out for humans to add them after the machines have created the structure.

This is great! How about adding tiny on board live cameras to each quadrotor so you can monitor the area below. I know its not necessary, but would be fun to watch..

this is wayyyy cool..

It’s fascinating to watch but as Cameron noted, cranes work pretty well. If you’ve ever worked construction, throwing walls up and framing is not the expensive part. I can’t really see how these robots would do insulation, sheathing, wiring, painting, plumbing, etc. These could all be done on the ground (or at a factory) then moved into place, now you have staging problems since most lots don’t have acreage for assembly and even then, a crane would do the trick just fine. And we’re not talking cute little quadrotors either but big honking quadrotors that would need solar power farms. Not to put this clever experiment down, but it would have to be a very specialized problem like insulator inspection on high tension lines (which RPV helicopters have been enlisted for)to pencil out and be cost effective .

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