Drone quadracopters throw and catch inverted pendulum Let the
spear-throwing killbot FUD commence Video All those stories
you've read lately about drones invading your privacy by
photographing you from afar? Kids' stuff … now that we have the
evidence below of drones throwing and catching an inverted
pendulum. That trick has been accomplished by boffins at ETH
Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, where a
“Flying Machine Arena” exists and is used to train flying 'bots.
The Institute and Arena scored plenty of attention back in 2011
with this video of quadracopters juggling, after a fashion. Now
Masters student Dario Brescianini has taught the drone
'quadracopters an even tougher trick: throwing and catching
inverted pendulum, essentially a pole with its centre of mass
above its pivot point. Because the inverted pendulum used has
two weights on its mid-section, its motion is rather more
complex than that of a ball. Teaching a quadracopter to toss and
catch one is therefore a rather harder problem