Unmanned vehicles themselves built the bridge. Free Technical Library News

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Unmanned vehicles built the bridge themselves

24.09.2015

New projects for the use of drones in construction appear almost every day. Not too long ago, for example, Japanese engineering firm Komatsu launched a system called Smart Construction, which combines cloud-based computing services provided by artificial intelligence. According to the company, the system will connect the three main components of a modern construction site: people, computers and drones.

One of the leading European organizations involved in the development of construction drones is the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Switzerland). A few months ago, the institute's researchers announced their plans to build tensile structures using unmanned aerial vehicles. They have just announced the first significant success in this direction - the construction by robots of a rope bridge capable of supporting the weight of an adult.

To do this, a group of quadcopters equipped with motorized cable reels autonomously flew back and forth between two bases, building a bridge using a synthetic cable made from Dyneema material. From fencing suits and tow ropes to bulletproof vests, blankets and even blackboards, this lightweight and durable ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene has found wide applications. The weight of the rope is only 7 g per meter, and the rope with a diameter of 4 mm is able to withstand a load of 1300 kg.

The only part of the construction, made by hand, steel supports. All the rest was done by quadcopters, which knitted knots, links and braid from 120 m of cable, creating a bridge of nine sections with a total length of 7,4 m. Before construction began, the drones made several test flights for training. But as they worked, they corrected their trajectory using a motion-capture system that monitored the position of the vehicles and took into account the force exerted on the vehicles as the tether deployed.

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