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Markus Waibel from robotspodcast pointed us to this amazing video
showing two quadcopters juggling a small ball. The video is made by the
Control of
Distributed, Autonomous Systems lab of professor at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Raffaello D'Andrea. It is
shot inside the Flying Machine Arena, a facility that provides a
control environment for motion control research. The two quadcopters are
based on the 'Hummingbird' quadrotor made by Ascending Technologies
with new controls and custom made electronics fabricated by the
institute. A vital component is a state of the art Vicon motion capture
system that provides the localization data to the robots and makes
extremely precise and dynamic control possible. You can learn more about
the labs other projects here.
( Prof. Raffaello D’Andrea was interviewed by the robotspodcast about KIVA systems warehouse robots and another member of
the team, Raymond Oung recently talked to us about an aerial modular robot called the Distributed Flight
Array. )