Video: The drone plane builds a pedestrian bridge

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) have succeeded in establishing a self-propelled drone team, making them automatically build a rope bridge, enough for an adult to pass through without to worry about safety.

The drone team built the bridge by foot for pedestrians

To complete this special bridge, the unmanned fleet is equipped with Dyneema coils , and according to what has been "taught", they will move back and forth between the two scaffolds, thus forming one complete bridge.

It is known that Dyneema is a wire made of polyethylene, which has an extremely high molecular weight and is often used in many things such as blankets or bulletproof boards. Each meter of this string weighs only 7 grams and the type with 4mm diameter can bear loads up to 1,300kg. This makes it an ideal material for buildings built in the air.

In the above work, the task of humans is to accurately measure the distance between two scaffolds, which is the fulcrum of the bridge. The rest is the mission of drones. At the end of the construction, a total of 120 meters of wire was used for the bridge with a length of about 7.4 meters.

As for why the other aircraft could accurately perform each operation to complete the bridge, scientists from the ETH Zürich Institute also explained. Specifically, before embarking on the bridge building process, a motion capture system outlined the detailed flight path for the aircraft. This system is capable of locating each drone, calculating how to get rope and creating a computer algorithm. This algorithm is then transferred to the drone via a wireless network connection.

Upon receiving the order, the drone fleet will immediately proceed to build the bridge until the end of the mission. According to the researchers, this is the first time unmanned aircraft demonstrate they can still be autonomous in building a service for people.