Swarm Of Nanoquadrotors Sweep TED Audience

When Vijay Kumar, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania showed the video of aerial robots swooping their way from one corner to another, the TED audience was bound to be awestruck. Proof of that is the staggering 200,000 views online at  ted.com since the video went up.

Vijay Kumar and his team, which includes Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger at the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, at the University of Pennsylvania, have developed flying quadrotor robots which co-operate as they function. They are designed to move together in formations, closing themselves into perfect battalions, capable of filling in the gap if and when one of their own drops out. Vijay Kumar compares the working of these robots to desert ants, who naturally group to haul a piece of fig back to their nest.

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Vijay Kumar, believes these robots would be useful to various applications, such as first responders to look for intruders or check for biochemical leaks or other disasters. Surprisingly, the robots do not depend on GPS. Instead, the coordinate system is defined by the robot, to locate itself and identify the object in picture. The robots have in-built gyroscopes and other sensors  which deliver information about its position and surroundings to an on-board processor, which emulates the operation of a brain allowing the robot to react autonomously and instantly to situations.

Don't forget to click on the link #-Link-Snipped-#, if you want to catch the group of robots forming a band to play the famous 'James Bond' theme.

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