Autonomous Quadrotors Fly Amazing Formations - 1:40 PM
Roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP are able
to get as many as 20 of their autonomous microcopters to fly in
formation and perform complex maneuvers flawlessly. In an
impressive new video, the GRASP — General Robotics, Automation,
Sensing and Perception — team makes their swarm of flying
microbots flip, change direction, navigate through obstacles and
even fly figure-eights with jaw-dropping agility and precision.
GRASP has since 2010 made remarkable advancements in the
capabilities of their tiny quadrotors, developed by Kmel
Robotics, and documented them with a series of videos showing
bots flying hoops and building a tower-like structure. The lab
is developing the ability to fly autonomously in formation,
communicating with each other to maintain position. Last year
the team demonstrated a basic formation flight with a lost-
communication demonstration where one of the aircraft drops out
on its own. There is still plenty of human input