British studio Foster + Partners, in collaboration with academic institutions, has secured funding to develop an automated fleet of robots and drones for on-site timber construction.

Named SWIFT-Build, which stands for Swarm-based Inverted Fabrication for Timber Buildings, the proposal won a €4 million, three-year research grant from the European Innovation Council's Pathfinder funding programme.

The project proposes using swarms of robotic assemblers and lifting units to build modular timber structures, aiming to improve the sustainability and efficiency of automated construction.

SWIFT-Build robots will build structures from the top down

Foster + Partners is the industry partner in the winning consortium, which also includes academic institutions the University of Bristol, the University of Southern Denmark, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Pisa, the Delft University of Technology, the University of Birmingham, and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

The studio described SWIFT-Build as an inverted robotic construction system that builds timber structures "from the top down".

"Combining state-of-the-art robotics and integrated AI tools, SWIFT-Build's inverted construction method can adapt to various scales and uses, with the potential for wide-reaching applications," said Foster + Partners senior partner Irene Gallou.

"The focus on timber modular construction highlights the project's sustainable agenda, with circularity and flexibility at its core."

Read: "Mobile robotic factory" deployed to create modular housing for LA wildfire recovery

The process begins with robots assembling the uppermost level of a structure on the ground, and then lifting the structure to make space for the level below to be assembled, and so on.

Layer by layer, ground-based robots and machines construct the structure, while drones will fly above to monitor the building progress and alert to any issues that arise.

"The robots share information continuously, allowing them to adapt and operate safely without constant human intervention," said Foster + Partners.

The research project will result in a full-scale demonstration of autonomous robots constructing a timber pavilion, which will be designed for disassembly.

Other robot-related stories recently featured on Dezeen include a centaur-like robot designed to aid humans doing dangerous jobs and a behind-the-scenes look at the company building America's first mail-order servant robot.

The image is by Foster + Partners.

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