Quadcopters build a 6 meter tower
idsc.ethz.ch
idsc.ethz.ch
Seriously, I want to see video of the assembly. Somewhere I saw video from the same project of a swarm of the bots doing coordinated movements and it was pretty cool and I've been waiting for video of this phase.
Edit: found some video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvN9Ri1GmuY
Admittedly I'd be a bit scared of the high powered blades and getting nicked on accident.
My guess is that autonomous retrofits of existing cranes and digging machinery will do most of the heavy lifting. I don't have much domain knowledge on construction though, does anyone disagree?
Note however that what currently requires most human intervention isn't the heavy duty. It is all the small work you have to do after: paint, floor, electricity, water, basic appliances. To automate all that, you need to replace not only the human mind, you have to replace the human hand.
Also replacing the human mind is obvious, though not necessarily easy: as you suggest, keep the machine, automate it, throw the human operator out.
The human hand, on the other hand, will take some insight to be replaced: how will you lay out all the tubes and the wires ? You cannot really expect human-sized machines do the same work the humans currently do, in the same way. The best solution is probably to to come up with clever ways to render the human hand unnecessary. You could for instance blend heavy duty work with the rest, (laying out cable as you put the bricks together, or something), or somehow changing how things are done.
But it looks like it could work.