Swarm of robot helicopters performs James Bond tune

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

We've seen them build towers and pyramids and perform acrobatic feats. But yesterday at the TED2012 conference in Long Beach, California, the swarm of autonomous robots, developed by Vijay Kumar and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, demonstrated their ability as flying musicians by performing the James Bond theme song.

The robots elegantly move around the room to play different instruments without crashing into each other. Each quadrotor has been assigned a series of points in space that it must reach at specific times to play notes. But the robots decide themselves which routes to take between the different locations. To help them out, infrared lights and cameras track reflectors on their bodies and wirelessly relay their position to the other robots.

The coordinated movement demonstrated in this performance is essential to flying swarms as they are developed to survey landscapes or build structures.

If you enjoyed this video, check out two robots that have "evolved" to sing together or watch a robotic head read music and sing.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d11474b/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cnstv0C20A120C0A30Cswarm0Eof0Erobot0Ehelicopters0Eperforms0Ejames0Ebond0Etune0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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