Roofing Drone Uses Nail Gun to Install Shingles

By Karen L. Edwards, RCS Editor.

Engineers successfully demonstrate autonomous roofing using a multicopter.

After having to perform some repairs on her roof a few years ago, Ella Atkins, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, decided to develop a roofing drone according to NewScientist.com.

Atkins teamed up with her colleagues to equip a DJI S1000 octocopter with an off the shelf RYOBI nail gun. They modified the nail gun so that it would trigger only when the tip of the gun touched the shingle surface and was held there for half of a second. A mount was designed for the gun that would allow it to be adjusted to the correct angle based on the roof pitch.

The team used open-source octocopter autopilot software to adapt the controls for the drone. Using a custom-built roof mockup, they began testing. In the video posted on the New Scientist website, you can watch the roofing drone at work.

The researchers published a white paper that details their testing. The team tested nailing at four different angles: 0-, 15-, 30- and 45-degree angles. At the 45-degree angle, testing was not successful. They suspect the failures were “partly due to the tooltip slipping because there is less friction and partly due to the propellers getting too close to the board when nailing.” Accuracy results demonstrate that the system can properly nail shingles to within a vertical 3 cm gap.

Atkins told New Scientist that she doesn’t think drones are going to eliminate jobs in roofing because they would still need a lot of help from people. To be viable for commercial use, Atkins says that the drone would need a power cord and pneumatic air supply so it could fly longer and use a professional gun.

Not mentioned in the article or paper is the benefit that this could have for roofing workers who may suffer from repetitive use injuries. By removing the repetitive nature of firing a nail gun thousands of times, a roofing drone could potentially eliminate a lot of injuries.

Get more roofing industry news and information like this delivered right to your inbox when you sign up for the Week-in-Review e-news.