The cross-shaped cut-outs are used for easy attachment to the
vehicle. We’ve seen Quadrocopters swarming like space invaders,
playing the James Bond theme music, and now, they’re playing
catch with a stick. This new feat was accomplished by Dario
Brescianini, a student at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic
Systems and Control, for his Masters Thesis project. The video
starts out with one quadrocopter balancing an inverted pendulum
on its platform, and then it proceeds to flip the stick over to
its friend, who catches it with ease. It’s really quite
remarkable. Learning the dynamics of the inverted pendulum is
commonplace in introductory Engineering courses, but applying it
to a flying robot presents a whole new set of challenges. To
complete this task, the team first constructed a 2-D
mathematical model of the system to understand at what angles
and speed the robot would need to fly in order to catapult the
stick toward its partner. Then, they physically tested their
model, made the appropriate adjustments, a