Quadrocopters are already accomplished piano players and Kinect-assisted navigators. Now they are playing tennis.
ETH Zurich's Flying Machine Arena hosted a quadrocopter tennis match, involving a human-robot volley, a doubles match and an impressive robot-to-robot juggling act. The robots were outfitted with tennis rackets, allowing them to fly toward the ball and return a human's serve. Watch it below.
Mark Müller, Sergei Lupashin and Raffaello D'Andrea conducted this experiment, part of ETH Zurich's ongoing project examining adaptive high-performance maneuvers. The team was also responsible for teaching a quadrocopter to play a Christmas carol last year.
The quadrocopters are apparently pretty competitive — notice how they dive for the ball even when it's out of reach.
[Golem.de]
138 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.
Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
A 10,000-rpm, no-pulse heart is completely revolutionizing how we think about transplants. Plus: rapid-response virus hunters, a shocking cure for migraines, the world's youngest person to have achieved nuclear fusion (in his parents' garage!), and much more.
NOOOOO! Robots are learning to play TENNIS! The rise of the machines has begun! They don't even play it horizontally, they play vertically. VERTICALLY PEOPLE! Their superior tennis skills will destroy us. We have to stop this before it goes to far!
Playing "vertically" is easy, playing horizontally is harder.
Was hopeing it would flip out and crash chasing the balls
We already had computers beating humans at chess and jeopardy, next to come is a robot wining at tennis.
I wonder if they could make one of those big enough to CARRY ME around?
- Robot Betty9
- www.robots-and-androids.com
- Just a 'bot that is hot in a 'lectronic world.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
These things should make hand grenades obsolete...
I want a couple of those things to make me a sandwich. Something with swiss cheese.
Well terminator movie bots made real , we might be dodging their bullets in the future rather than playing ball"
They are using thoose in Libia now ,but i am not to sure werever they can discriminate alien from foe ...
In doubt they simply shoot first and dont answer any questions...
LOL ! :)
This is really cool =) It's fun watching robots play something as simple as tennis. It all falls back on us showing just how smart and powerful the human race is. It's not living but it does think and act on its own like a living organism.
38KKK
*D Ace Lee*
\m/(>.<)\m/
They need to arm them with lasers, so they can zap the offending balls. I hope they stick to ping pong balls.
Robert1234 Until they master the slam, I'm still KING!
First We got beaten in chess, and now this.... Its a sad world.
Anyone seen this new tech blog at www.regiz.blogspot.com