Aerial Building Manufacturing

Aerial Building Manufacturing is a UK EPSRC funded research that will develop an aerial robotic construction system that enables aerial robots to 3D print building structures autonomously. Aerial Building Manufacturing (ABM) is already being trialled in many parts of the world and involves the use of large robots on a building site to 3D print (extrude) building materials to construct buildings. The research aims to miniaturise ABM and provide it with aerial capabilities so that it can be more mobile, and able to manufacture complex building structures while adapting to diverse site scenarios. This miniaturisation will also enable parallel production, where swarms of aerial printers working together could potentially reduce construction time and enable safer construction in hard-to access and dangerous conditions; often faced in construction work at-height and post-disaster reconstruction. For more information, please click here‌.

Automated Construction in Unstructured Environments with Aerial Robots

Our goal is to develop novel autonomous manufacturing methods by investigating techniques for building physical structures with aerial robots. This pursuit is multidisciplinary, combining unconventional building materials, behavioural construction algorithms and swarm control of aerial robot builders. The work is largely inspired by the way how animals, such as birds and bees, build structures using environmental material in combination with adhesives and intricate architectural designs. The current focus areas of the work include:

• Robot and mechanism designs for aerial construction Bespoke aerial robots, mechanisms, and hardware that are designed and optimised for construction tasks including deploying tensile elements and depositing amorphous materials. 
• Algorithms for automated collective construction and assembly Framework for autonomous construction that utilises swarm intelligence,  task allocation and sharing, reactive response to dynamic environment conditions such as 
• Materials and structures design  Development of lightweight materials with specifications and properties specific to aerial construction and deposition procedures for building freeform structures.