Tower To Be Built By Flying Robots

Zothecula writes with an excerpt from an article in Gizmag: "The FRAC Centre in Orléans, France will for the first time host an exhibition to be built entirely by flying robots. Titled 'Flight Assembled Architecture,' the six meter-high tower will be made up of 1,500 prefabricated polystyrene foam modules. The installation involves a fleet of quadrocopters that are programmed to interact, lift, transport and assemble the final tower, all the time receiving commands wirelessly from a local control room."

Comments

It would be better if ...

[fsckmnky]

The flying robots assembled a tower of topless female college cheerleaders.

Cost benefit ratio

[MichaelSmith]

I wonder if it would have been cheaper to make every component a flying robot and just have them assemble themselves.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[Theophany]

Not only would that be incredibly awesome to watch, but in case of natural disasters the building could pre-emptively disassemble to prevent total destruction. Of course, the building's inhabitants would need to cling to the nearest robot component for dear life whilst being suspended a few hundred feet in the air in the event of such a disaster, but we can worry about that after the video becomes a YouTube sensation.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

If you shop around, you can find bricks for less than a dollar each.

Yes, but as the article* pointed out, this tower is not made of 99c bricks, but prefabricated polystyrene foam modules. Which could be cheap, but most probably are one-offs that are reasonably expensive to manufacture in the quantities required.

You need to revisit your cost-benefit ratio if you're basing it around 99c bricks.

* I know its not fashionable to read the article here on slashdot, but it mentions this right in the summary.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[MichaelSmith]

I am inspired by the idea of fractal robots. Basically you mass produce robotic building materials and broadcast plans for structures to them. Doors and windows could be created in a building as required by the building materials. As the technology matures the robots may acquire intelligence. I imagine a future where lonely swarms of bricks roam the countryside looking for sleeping homeless humans to build houses around.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[artor3]

Presumably, you have to pay someone to lay those bricks. If you can make a $2 brick that lays itself, you might start getting close to parity. Not that I think we're there yet, but it is cool to think about.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[Penguinshit]

or tombs, after Skynet becomes self-aware.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[rikxik]

Intelligent bricks:

brick1: Man, look at that brick chick just out of the kiln.. she's hot! I have a hard-on
brick2: Stop hitting on her!
brick1: Look, I'll just fly-over and tell her that I had to lay upon her... I'm smooth like that.
brick2: Dude, don't be all hot and heavy... you'll be stone-walled.
brick1: You can't break my resolve (flies away).
brick2: Sigh.

Re:Cost benefit ratio

[MichaelSmith]

I think it's sheer stupidity to not have that kind of structure built by humans.

The whole point is to build it with robots.

And then? And then!!

[Statecraftsman]

I will totally buy the DVD if they can have this sissy tower repeatedly destroyed by one or more Big Dogs.

It's art

[bradley13]

On a practical level, so what? The robots are all controlled centrally, by remote control. There's nothing hugely special about the technology.

The point of this is art. According to TFA, the flight paths will be programmed to produce arcs, circles, etc - i.e., to look pretty. Might be a nifty exhibit to watch.

Re:It's art

[Xacid]

Seriously? There's a lot of potential here with this kind of tech being refined.

Imagine an architecture/engineering firm being able to program and automate the entire construction process with these things. Or build in modular chunks and have them assembled wherever they're delivered.

Two centuries of job destruction

[caliburngreywolf]

aaaaaand we move one step closer to a world where everything is done by machines. What do we do when anything that isn't "art" is doable by (non-human) automotons? The good answer would be "relax and let our robot slaves do everything" but realistically, with our current social, political, and economic systems, soemonwe would own the machines and make all the money while the masses would be left to pursue an ever-diminishing job pool. Name a job that cannot be done by robots and software....one day your answer will be wrong. MIlitary? nope. we have predator-like systems that are automated and even use facial recognition software to pre-authorize a "kill-shot" Manufacturing? 3d printers. CAD design? not too l.ong before computer-aided becomes computer-run. Not that this is the best topic to rant on, but the japanese have nurse and childcare robots, right? If I recall, there's even a programming language written by a computer. politicians are talking about job creation when nearly every scientific and business researcher out there is actively engaged in the pursuit of job destruction and has been for nearly two centuries. How can we continue to base an economy off the idea that everyone should attempt to be gainfully employed when we continue to replace every possible job with automation?

Re:Two centuries of job destruction

[HiThere]

*Today's* Robots and software cannot sufficiently deal with malicious human actors.

There are lots of jobs that today’s robots and software can't handle. That doesn't tell you much about tomorrow's. Or the day after tomorrow.

If society doesn't adapt to this, things will get brutal. You want a "Butlerian Jihad"? This is the way to get it. The Luddites weren't being unreasonable, they were fighting to keep the jobs that their survival depended upon. Popular history tells the story the bosses used, but the facts are there if you dig them up.

Did you ever hear about the riots caused by calendar reform when the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar in Britain? Guess what those were about. "Give us back our 21 days!" meant that the landlords charged everyone nearly an extra months rent. THAT's what those riots were about. It wasn't people being silly and superstitious, as I was taught in grade school. Whenever you hear of mobs of upset people being "silly and superstious" throughout history, if you check carefully you will usually find that the story has been corrupted, and they were protesting a vile injustice being committed upon them. (They didn't always pick the right target. Scapegoating is common. But they [nearly?] always have an actual injustice that they are protesting.)

This business of requiring that everyone have a job when the decent jobs are disappearing is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Re:Two centuries of job destruction

[Iamthecheese]

The ownership of the robots is becoming more concentrated over time, and earlier solutions won't help. Robots don't unionize.