Chris Anderson

Synchonized/mated quadcopters


From BotJunkie:

"Quadrotors are getting smarter and more talented, but besides surveillance, their usefulness is a bit limited due to their size. Where one little helicopter fails, however, an assemblage of little helicopters might be able to succeed. The Distributed Flight Array is a project from the Institute of Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich that aims to combine a bunch of different little autonomous helicopters into a big glob of autonomous helicopters. Each helicopter unit has its own motor, computer, and sensors, and can wirelessly communicate with all the other units. In addition to flying, they also have little motorized wheels underneath to let them crawl around the ground.

There are all kinds of ways in which a distributed flight array could be useful. One of the most obvious is heavy lifting… Got something heavy? Call in a bunch of robots to combine and lift it. Got something heavier? Call in a bunch more. If one robot breaks, it’s not a big deal, since you can just swap in another one. The robots are even able to adapt on the fly to keep the entire array stable, so adding and removing individual robots is relatively straightforward. Still, getting the robots to reliably dock with each other in mid air is probably easier said than done… We’ll definite be looking forward to seeing some video of that in action."


[ DFA ]

Views: 19

Morli Comment by Morli on June 7, 2010 at 12:58pm
This is getting better and better. :)) , I wonder what we get to witness in next 10 years!!!
Gary Mortimer Comment by Gary Mortimer on June 7, 2010 at 2:34pm
How cool
Martin Seven Comment by Martin Seven on June 7, 2010 at 2:39pm
Do you guys think that airborne camera drones will replace camera cranes in theaters and cctv cameras in public places?
Morli Comment by Morli on June 7, 2010 at 2:57pm
Not in the place where you don't have to use hard hat( atleast not for now). Any thing that can fall at the speed of gravity on top of your head dictates usage of Hardhat IMHO.
Martin Seven Comment by Martin Seven on June 7, 2010 at 3:04pm
I was thinking more like scifi movie cameras... 1 cu in flying thingy that falls like a piece of styrofoam when it dies. More like flies than birds :))
Morli Comment by Morli on June 7, 2010 at 3:09pm
May be by 2020 ;) then

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