Toy-sized quadrotors flying in formation

Researchers from GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania developed software to allow toy-sized nano quadrotors to fly in tight, precise and eerie formation. Gmoke sez, "William Gibson dreams of a mass of these things comprising a flying skyscraper. I imagine them as surveillance and policing drones ready to stop the OWS action or Arab Spring before it can start."

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors (Thanks, Gmoke!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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The Snowden Principle

awjt

Oh, I was looking for information on toy-sized quadrotors. Must have misread that.
http://twitter.com/chris23 chris arkenberg

Internet bonus to anyone who starts programming them as flying pixels.
- http://www.facebook.com/aluked Everson Bernardes
  
  Then, exactly 8 seconds later, you’ll get bee-buzzing, wall-sized pictures of flying cocks.
http://twitter.com/jenn2d2 Jennifer Dittrich

Ah, but then you can also imagine them deployed as a lookout for police action against protests, to make the groups’ responses more nimble and timely.
- digi_owl
  
  Only lookouts?
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the beginning of the end.
Hosidax

Somehow I find this frightening…
- ncinerate
  
  On second view, I agree with you. There’s something just eerily “intelligent” about the way they are moving. If I saw a flock of these things coming at me I would lose my marbles.
  
  The sound they make, the creepy way they move, it feels almost alien.
- chaopoiesis
  
  Cue the hypodermic payload…
http://twitter.com/EvanJGregory Evan Gregory

All you need is a slingshot and you could be playing space invaders IRL.
- Guest
  
  All I could hear was the Space Invaders music the whole time.
http://chicagoscooterclub.com Chicago_SC

That amazing but it needs some music.

Seeing that it’s 2112 RUSH DAY…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17t4bSaMvl4

Fly By Night
- Donald Petersen
  
  Naw. Scale these up a bit and suddenly you have Red Barchetta, except with Eyes that can’t be eluded, and “gleaming alloy aircars” much less than two lanes wide, which you won’t leave behind at the one-lane bridge.
  
  Suddenly that song got a whole lot scarier.
http://twitter.com/bigattichouse bigattichouse

shrink them down to “speck” scale, power them via radio waves, and have a million of these pixels and you have your holodeck.
yvgeny

Our future nanolords. I for one…well, you know.
Wisconsin Platt

Time to pickup a shotgun
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BOOM27DBLMZQIJVK4BQLE7K5YA Nagurski
  
  I was wondering if some kind of string projectile thrown into their midst wouldn’t be pretty effective.
  - sqrrlwrench
    
    I’d lay odds that they can be taken down by a can of silly string; just aim above them and the downdraft will suck the goo into the rotors.
  - Quib
    
    It’s so simple! We build spider-bots to catch them!
    - digi_owl
      
      or maybe a bird? http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/a_robot_that_flies_like_a_bird.html
  - Paul Terlecki
    
    Defiantly silly string!
KBert

Some year soon this will be the must-have item for holiday gifting… I can’t wait!
awjt

How many of them do I need to swoop in and pick up someone I don’t like?
http://www.zachstronaut.com/ zachstronaut

I can’t get over how thrillingly cool that was to watch, while simultaneously being deeply disconcerting.
- voiceinthedistance
  
  Here’s a second to the “deeply disconcerting” part.
Lobster

GRASP. What a perfect name for a supervillain organization!
UXO

Am I the only one humming “Ride of the Valkyries” while watching this?
- noah django
  
  I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

I’d really like to see tiny helicopters used as a delivery service. Imagine being able to order say, a can of soda online, and all you have to do is open the window and a little helicopter flies inside and drops off your delivery.

Sort of a robot carrier pigeon but with more lift.
- Guest
  
  a can of soda, or a live grenade? Yeah.
- Ashen Victor
  
  Would you say that sort of robot could carry more lift than a swallow?
  Like a coconut?
  - noah django
    
    Swallow? African or European?
    - http://www.facebook.com/kieran.bew Kieran Bew
      
      How’d you know so much about swallows?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KLDXI7FI3NUHYC23SUHMGLNBCQ Tom

Oh Lord I want a hundred of these so I can spell naughty words in the sky.

I don’t care what station I reach in life, part of me will always be 10 years old.
- bklynchris
  
  Hell, with a thousand we could have aerial pixilated porn, and I will always be 13 yo ; )
allium

It seems they’d be vulnerable to some sort of mesh or filigree that was thrown in the air over a wide enough area. Looks like a net loss to me.
bcsizemo

I’m guessing these things have a sub 15 minute flight time, which still makes it cool. But really more about the concept and design of the interaction as compared to the stability of the individual copter.

Besides all I could think was “No one can defeat the Quad Laser.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNYMxgNKIEU
jwkrk

One quadrotor: cool toy
Two quadrotors: cool toy with a friend
Many quatrotors: creepy

Sort of like bees; I don’t mind a few, but a swarm, and I’m slowly backing away.
- Lobster
  
  Great idea! Give them stingers!
Vadym Zakrevskyy

There’s nothing sinister about this technology. It is what’s inside the heads of those commanding the programmers of the drones that worries me. Having faith in humanity, I’d rather imagine them searching for earthquake victims, a lost cat, people lost in the woods, a part of art installation or performance, or a spelling out “I Love You” in front of someone’s daughter’s house… or blowing dust of my desk!
- Donald Petersen
  
  Having lost much faith in humanity, I can’t help imagining the potential (and inevitable) misuses. Inevitable? Why, yes. The nerds don’t mean to be the end of us all, by no means, but such a setup is entirely too useful for espionage, seek-and-destroy, infiltration, and many other non-peaceful applications outside what might occur to a random eleven-year-old’s imagination within seconds of seeing these little dudes in action. And the people who might utilize this technology for potentially nefarious (or at least oppressive and most certainly nosy) ends have deep pockets indeed.
  - RuthlessRuben
    
    So your suggested course of action is what now? Kill off all research that “might” be used towards nefarious ends? Stop everybody from doing anything that a government “might” misuse? Let’s say we do that, nanny-state research as a grassroots movement. How do we categorize projects into threatening and non-threatening? What is “misuse”, where does it start, what kind of research leads to it, and where do we draw the line? Armed robots, flying robots? Robots in general?
    
    Call me weird, but I see this technology with hope as well. Because seriously, if we wanted our governments not to use technology against citizens, we’d have to roll back past the invention of the biface. And mostly, this distrust, this outright fear of what science and technology may bring is usually centered on anything with robots and/or cameras. Combo bonus if both. Read the comments under any given video showcasing a new outright weapon, and you’ll find very few people going “oh my, this could kill someone”. Because, duh, obviously, right? But go to any video showing a robot, drone or whatever, and most of the comments are a variation on the theme of “Oh my, the robots will destroy us all” with varying degrees of earnestness. So while we’re not worried that the government might misuse, say, distance-timed airburst grenade launchers, the moment they invent a new kind of camera everybody is required by the standards of good free-thinking citizens everywhere to wet their pants?
    
    Yes, yes, yes, the surveillance state, the pre-emptive war, the glass human, of course it feeds into that. But lets face it, at the actual end of an uprising the main cause for said end was usually people with guns versus people with no guns. This is the crux of the matter. While it’s certainly true that technology and surveillance gathering is paramount, I firmly believe that distrusting every new surveillance technology is the techie equivalent of worrying that D&D might turn kids into satanists.
    
    We should readily embrace these technologies, develop them even further, and make them our own, make it possible for everybody to access their own little swarm of tiny camera robots. And once everybody has them, they’re regulated, and they’re less of a threat. Less so, yes, because everybody owning guns hasn’t made anybody any safer right? Yes, right, but these are not guns.
    
    Guns are invented for the sole purpose of murdering other human beings, while these robots can have other applications. People agonize endlessly over robots, but apparently not many people are worried about stuff like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM25_Individual_Airburst_Weapon_System which could very well be used to dig out insurgents out of trenches right now. Or freedom fighters, depending on the perspective you choose to hold.
    
    I say we direct more ire against technology that WILL be used to kill foreigners and citizens and less against technology that MIGHT.
    
    ‘s all I’m sayin.
    - Donald Petersen
      
      All I’m sayin’ is that a hell of a lot of the gee-whiz things brought to us in the name of science by clever kids with a well-equipped lab at their disposal are things whose existence we eventually have cause to bemoan. No, I don’t think that’s anywhere close to reason enough to stop developing and innovating and seeing what we can do. The question of whether we should do something versus whether we can do something has never been the paramount worry for me. I have a Dr Frankenstein streak in me a mile wide. I don’t prescribe an end to science, nor a pre-emptive reining-in of technology such as this. My advocacy is toward an enhanced and accelerated understanding of what things like this will eventually mean. We, as a culture and as a species, are often slow to grasp the implications of our actions. And we’re our own worst enemy as well. We seem constitutionally unable to create and disseminate, for example, an affordable handheld device that offers instant realtime audiovisual communication, access to the internet and all the information and wisdom of the ages contained therein, and global positioning to allow us to keep our bearings and find out what resources are nearby and advantageous to us, without building into every last one of these devices the wherewithal for monitoring, eavesdropping, tracking, and surveillance by whatever powers that be. We can’t seem to leave other people alone. Anytime we create a technology that can somehow conceivably be used for evil, it seems we eventually do use it thus. Instead of using our imaginations to envision ways we can better get along with our age-old enemies (real and perceived), our default reaction is to imagine new and better ways of using technology to try to defeat them. I have an imagination which is really no darker nor lighter than the average human’s, but I can imagine terrible uses indeed for a synchronized flock of nanocopters. I don’t have an “evil” use for these things myself, but I know that others do. And so it will come to pass. What are we to do about it? Live with it. As long as we can.
      - hexmonkey
        
        TL;DR
      - Donald Petersen
        
        Yeah, I get that a lot. Usually from the cleverest wags.
- Lobster
  
  The man who invented the fire hose did not at first think, “finally, finally, a way to suppress rioters.”
pKp

Speaking of SFnal precursors, these are pretty much the security system of the New Victorians in Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age, IIRC.
- http://twitter.com/slowtiger slowtiger
  
  Much earlier, this concept was invented (AFAIK) by Stanislaw Lem in “The Invincible”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible
- http://twitter.com/petitepoubelle petite poubelle
  
  Came for dog pod grid, leaving satisfied.
  - http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
    
    You beat me to it. I can’t recall how the grid in the diamond age resisted intrusion but I suppose it involves a few nods self destructing when they are pushed out of the way/
ncinerate

As soon as the “formation” demonstration came on all I could see was space invaders or galaga. Thank god for the 1980′s and my massive amount of training in fighting these small craft as they fly toward me in a 4×5 formation. Give me a blaster, I can take em!

Seriously though, these craft are just RIPE for creating a “real” game of galaga. Add a laser-gun to “shoot down” incoming quad rotors and let me at it. Sounds fun.
- bklynchris
  
  I……know….how old you are (read in a sing songy voice), because I was thinking the same exact thing, well that and-I want one, no twenty : )
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XDXCHOC3MSV5MBEOPV76POG7EE Jonathan

Man, I wish I’d done engineering in university. Marine biology is so lame compared to this stuff. :(
Jay Converse

It’s SKYNET!!!
http://libraries.unl.edu dross1260

Must remember to pack mist net now
Finnagain

Nice, but they should be shaped like winged monkeys with fezzes. Fezzes are cool.
Allen

The smiley emoticon they form at the end of the video reassures me that their intentions are purely good.
GIFtheory

To all the haters: if scientists just gave up every time something could possibly be used for evil, the rest of us would still be wandering around in loincloths, collecting berries and murdering each other with pointy sticks. Blaming science for the world’s ills is a perilous philosophy.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XDXCHOC3MSV5MBEOPV76POG7EE Jonathan
  
  Not so fast! Someone had to invent the pointed stick ;)
- Guest
  
  Pretty much all of us deserve to be wandering around in loincloths, collecting berries and murdering each other with pointy sticks. I blame science only for increasing the reach, hubris, damages, and volume of inevitably tragic folly wrought by the human ego.
  
  (which, by itself, is pretty entertaining, so, go science!)
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHYGgOXww48
http://twitter.com/gratefulvideo gratefulvideo

Oh no! Just wait until SF park rangers get a hold of this.
Val Lindsay

I for one welcome our cybernetic shriner overlords…
lorq

On the other hand, one electro-magnetic pulse and dead quadrotors are falling from the sky like hail.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VTMUNEIFSXMSDTDAUFOZKPQ73U C

Gmoke need not worry these things will kill the Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood was quite ready and able to strangle it in the crib already.
- Diogenes
  
  Try a rubber sheet.
- Guest
  
  Our collective yawn was of great assistance as well
Diogenes

Reminds me a little of Stephen King’s “Battleground”. I’d pay to see them goofing on the TSA, except you know it would end in gunfire within the passenger area of a crowded airport.
Ted Brennan

The University of Pennsylvania Marching Band is going to be getting implants soon.
CognitiveDissident

Not that I always agree with them, but I’m glad someone is looking into this…
(The future is getting creepier and more like a cheesey sci-fi B-movie all the time…)

Report: “Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft” (web page)
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/report-protecting-privacy-aerial-surveillance-recommendations-government-use

Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance (pdf)
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf
stephenhill77

Non-Dairy creamer by itself isn’t very flammable, but when aerated, becomes very much so. I expect nano-copters to have similar characteristics when in large enough quantities.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/837601/coffee_creamer_explosion/
- penguinchris
  
  As a kid, I heard about the tragic tunnel fire/explosion in the Alps caused by a crashed truck carrying flour, and tried to replicate the results by building a flour bomb.
  
  I never quite got it to work, but as that video shows getting a result is apparently not difficult. I think I was smart enough at the time to not do it his way, though. Looks like he burned or at least singed himself a couple times (if not every time).
stephenhill77

I’d also like to see these used as a giant Space Invaders setup.
robuluz

Dry your eyes sweethearts! Tiny formation flying robots are awesome. I don’t think you need to worry about the Government using these for surveillance, they can just make shit up about you and go with that anyway.
parrotboy

This is one of those things that gets funded and created by the powerful, then hacked and repurposed by the rest of us.

Like guns. Kings and other feudal types thought: “I could really stop a lot of peasants with a few of those.” A few years later, a peasant or three thought “Wow, I can hit the Duke from way over here.”

These little quadrotors will be good for watching the people, and I’m sure that nefarious purpose is first on the list. But now that they exist, it won’t be long before they are weaponized by the oppressed as well as the oppressors. And they would be fairly cheap to make, compared to an armoured car, or even a rifle.
Anon_Mahna

Raise your hand if you saw this and got confused that they had not programmed a formation demo to resemble Spaced Invaders.
benher

The technology is amazing, but surely within reach of the same parties that would likely be targeted by police and oppressive governments?
- benher
  
  Forgot about these. Ball shaped flying robots – built with parts at the local robo shops in Akihabara.
  
  空飛ぶ球体http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xj9jrq_yyyyy_tech
  - penguinchris
    
    Unfortunately, most of us do not have access to a “local robo shop”, or anything resembling anything like Akihabara :)
    
    I did quite like the cute girl in that video, and the fact that they used the “Danger Zone” song from Top Gun as part of the sound track :)
EvilTerran

Everyone fretting about mis-uses of them seem to be missing something important about this demo, IMO — this seems to be going on in a wind-proof testing room. I suspect they’re a long way off from being able to keep such tidy formations in a breeze, and are probably crash-tastic in an even vaguely strong wind.
David Kopelman

When does it become self-aware?
http://twitter.com/IanBruce Ian Bruce 伊恩·布鲁斯

Like EvilTerran mentioned, this is a heavily leveraged demo. None of the quads have any awareness of their position, environment, obstacles, or relationship to one another. Their positions in space are tracked by a highly redundant network of fixed optical sensors. While the software coordinating and controlling their antics is impressive, I don’t expect the deployment of an autonomous flock of these bad boys anytime soon.
- CCinBmore
  
  I dunno – you sure about that? I haven’t delved into the U Penn site to see how they’re actually doing it but off-the-shelf hardware and chips can add ultrasonic distance sensors and positioning algorithms.
  
  My Hexacopter is outfitted this way so that I can fly it up the side of a building at a fixed distance for engineering investigation work (it’s also outfitted with a controllable gimbaled camera mount and live video downlink – it can be flown in first person video mode).
- CognitiveDissident
  
  Of, course, don’t worry, they probably get their funding from some toymakers, like Hasbro and Mattel and Parker Bros, nothing to worry about there… (someone check on that, will you?)
  
  When you get right down to it, it’s all about maximum future fun for all Americans!
  It’s the Happy Fun Formation Flyer! (Happy Fun Ball deployed separately.)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tyler-Bryant/100003553950922 Tyler Bryant

Am I the only one who instantly thought about making a real-life version of Space Invaders with these…?