Flying Machine Enabled Construction

Flight Assembled Architecture, a collaboration with architects Gramazio & Kohler, is an exploration in aerial construction. Conceived as a 1:100 model of a 600 m high vertical village, the four day long, live exhibition featured four quadrocopters building a 6-meter tall tower out of 1500 foam bricks. The exhibition took place at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France from December 1 to 4, 2011. The FRAC Centre is an architectural art museum in the outskirts of Paris that promotes contemporary art, both nationally and internationally. During the opening night the museum hosted 300 enthusiastic people.

Being able to accurately and reliably place a brick is fundamental to a successful construction. Many ideas, iterations and fine-tuning showed that the most accurate and reliable method of placing a brick, is to "fly" it quickly into place, avoiding significant disturbance due to turbulences or ground effect.

Starting at a specified distance above the brick, the vehicle plans a trajectory that will result in the brick being flown into the structure with a specified velocity. Testing showed that lower impact velocities (and thus gentler landings), were significantly affected by turbulence and ground-effect around the structure. For this reason, a faster and more aggressive impact is favored.

F. Augugliaro, S. Lupashin, M. Hamer, C. Male, M. Hehn, M.W. Mueller, J. Willmann, F. Gramazio, M. Kohler, and R. D’Andrea, “The Flight Assembled Architecture Installation: Cooperative construction with flying machines”, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Volume 34, Issue 4, 2014, pp. 46 – 64
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February 24, 2012
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