Robots assembling buildings

Some academics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have put together an incredible exhibition demonstrating building construction using little flying helicopters.  The structure is a simple sculptural assembly of foam bricks, but the demonstration is remarkable for the possibilities it envisions.



I can imagine a future construction site erecting scaffolding around a building perimeter for the use of cameras and recharging platforms.  Would you still need to deliver materials to the site, or would the robots fly directly to warehouses, or directly to the manufacturers to pick up materials?  How many different materials would be developed to accommodate the robots' capabilites, or would different materials require different types of robots?  Would each building material manufacturer also design a corresponding assembly robot that would come with the purchase price or be leased when you purchase the material?  How would flying robots work for concrete, thousands of robots each bringing small quanities, or would they simply handle the equipment we use today?  What about robots that contain a small amound of liquid that quickly hardens into different types of finish material?

And what does this construction method do to architecture as we know it today?  There seem to be lots of limitations, but it also seems to open up new possibilities geometrically.  Would the architect simply deliver a three dimensional model?  Could this be the dawn of a truly paperless design and construction process?

I think what I love about this project is how simple it is and, as a result of this simplicity, how vast the possiblities are.