Building a Bridge with Flying Robots

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.