A fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have proven in the lab to work autonomously and in tandem to construct and repair buildings.

Elizabeth Montalbano

October 4, 2022

2 Min Read
unmanned aerial vehicles 1_concrete_print_2.jpg
Researchers have developed a fleet of 3D-printing drones that can be used to construct buildings on the fly—literally. Image courtesy of Imperial College London/Empa

Imagine being able to use 3D printing to construct an entire building using drones without anyone needing to be at the construction site. That's the promise of new technology developed through a collaboration between researchers at Imperial College London and Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology).

Researchers at the institutions created a fleet of bee-inspired 3D printers that fly using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology that they envision can construct buildings, make repairs to high structures, or aid in post-disaster relief construction, they said.

The team, led by Professor Mirko Kovac, professor at Imperial’s Department of Aeronautics and head of Empa’s Materials and Technology Center of Robotics, was inspired by bees and wasps to create the flying 3D printers that work collectively as a group, just as the flying insects do when constructing their own hives or nests.

The drones in the fleet are known collectively as Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM). They work together autonomously from a single blueprint, though they do have a human controller check their progress as they go and will intervene if necessary to ensure construction goes smoothly, based on information received by the drones.

Testing the Fleet off Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

To build the fleet, researchers created two types of 3D-printing drones—BuilDrones, which deposit materials during flight; and quality-controlling ScanDrones that continually measure the BuilDrones’ output and let them know the next steps for fabrication.

To test the concept, the researchers developed four bespoke cement-like mixtures that the drones could use to build a structure. Researchers aimed to analyze the drones' progress in real time to ensure that they worked collectively not only to build but also to adapt behavior to meet building specifications with an accuracy of 5 millimeters, they said.

The prints that the drones fabricated included a 72-layer, 2.05-meter-high cylinder made using a polyurethane-based foam material, and a 28-layer, 18-centimeter high cylinder made with a custom-designed structural cementitious material.

The results of the builds were promising, proving that the drones could work together and without intervention to construct and repair buildings in the lab, reported Kovac. Researchers published a paper on their work in the journal Nature.

Future Application

The next step for researchers would be to prove that Aerial-AM works in a real-world scenario, such as to build or repair structures in tall or other hard-to-access locations, they said. The potential is there, Kovac noted, because the solution is scalable to larger structures.

To prove this potential, researchers plan to work with construction companies to validate the solutions and provide repair and manufacturing capabilities, he said.

Benefits to the use of the drones in construction are numerous, including lowering not just risks but also costs as compared with traditional manual methods, Kovac said.

The solution also has the potential to significantly lower the impact of construction on the environment, consuming less material and other resources than the current industry does, researchers said.

About the Author(s)

Elizabeth Montalbano

Elizabeth Montalbano has been a professional journalist covering the telecommunications, technology and business sectors since 1998. Prior to her work at Design News, she has previously written news, features and opinion articles for Phone+, CRN (now ChannelWeb), the IDG News Service, Informationweek and CNNMoney, among other publications. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she also has lived and worked in Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco and New York City. She currently resides in Lagos, Portugal. Montalbano has a bachelor's degree in English/Communications from De Sales University and a master's degree from Arizona State University in creative writing.

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