Very soon you can employ quadrocopter drones to help you make a rope bridge strong enough to bear heavy weight.

Research specialists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland have programmed quadrocopter drones that can efficiently construct a rope bridge that can support human weight.

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New York News Daily reported that the project was conducted as a collaboration between researchers, Raffaello D'Andrea, Ammar Mirjan, Fabio Gramazio, Matthias Kholer and Federico Augugliaro, at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control and Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zurich, who specialize in robotic aerial construction and architecture.

The ETH Zurich research workers said that the vehicles are equipped with a motorized spool that allows them to control the tension acting on the rope during deployment. They further told that a plastic tube guides the rope to the release point located between two propellers. The external forces and torques exerted on the quadrocopter by the rope during deployment are estimated and taken into account to achieve compliant flight behavior.

According to Singularity Hub, this research adds to other works such as building bricklaying robots and an old UPenn project which both used quadcopters to lift and place magnetically bound struts into a structure.

The researchers of this work have also used a light-weight rope, which can generally bear heavy weight, and it is therefore said to be ideal for aerial construction.

The research workers claimed that, except for the anchor points at both the ends of the rope bridge, the entire work is done by the drones.

The rope bridge was about 7.4 meters and comprises 9 rope segments for a total rope length of 120 meters. The drones can efficiently loop around the scaffolding structure to secure knots and can also weave links and braids.

The researchers walked across the bridge one after another to ensure that it is strong enough to bear heavy weight.