TED2012: Robot quadcopters perform James Bond theme

[Video Link] I imagine OK Go will be giving these guys a call soon!

Quadrotors designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor. A special microphone attached to the frame records the notes made by the "couch guitar".

These flying quadrotors are completely autonomous, meaning humans are not controlling them; rather they are controlled by a computer programed with instructions to play the instruments.

Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science is home to some of the most innovative robotics research on the planet, much of it coming out of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab.

This video premiered at the TED2012 Conference in Long Beach, California on February 29, 2012. Deputy Dean for Education and GRASP lab member Vijay Kumar presented some of this groundbreaking work at the TED2012 conference, an international gathering of people and ideas from technology, entertainment, and design.

More information

Toy-sized quadrotors flying in formation

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

http://twitter.com/TheRedMonk01 Red Monk

Now lets see them do Buckethead.
TimRowledge

How long before the automated take-down notice?
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  Served by cute little quadro-copter laywers, hovering menacingly in front of your door….
  - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
    
    It’s the quadro-copter secret police
    they’ve come for you
    and your un-cool neice.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_425GVKQCLFZMQYYENR7CJBRDVA jb

OK! Have you picked out your favorite bunker site for the coming robopocalypse? Because we’re officially all doomed.
- awjt
  
  Exactly. The droning buzz in the background was scarrrrrrrry to me. And the odd minor key and flatness.
Marcelo Teson

The guitar at the end made me LOL. Like actually in real life.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Andy-Murdock/783770273 Andy Murdock

These little fly spies also have a license to kill.
skeptacally

WAY scarier than the Vietnamese water bugs!
irksome

A coupla thousand hipsters just lost interest in playing the ukulele.
TimmoWarner

Many times in Science Fiction I’ve seen a swarm of tiny robots go to work on something all moving in coordinated chaos and it’s always given me a weird feeling of unease. Like I was viewing an alien life form even though it’s robotic.

This is the first time robots in real life have given me that feeling.
Robert

I have seen the future, and it is little quadro-bugs killing me with cute.
Eark_the_Bunny

This looks like something out of an ANIMUSIC video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo
http://aqfl.net Ant

Or the real thing by Intel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAQX8W3D6Mg ;)
pjcamp

As envisioned by a hung over Kurt Weill at 16 RPM.
chaopoiesis

About halfway through I had the distinct impression I was watching a fur-free Muppets segment.
http://profile.yahoo.com/KNEBRUXIHJFQ5J3HGLZUA4477U David

I, for one, am now hoping that “swarm of tiny robots” is part of the villain’s scheme in the next Bond movie…
http://twitter.com/taro3yen taro3yen

Hot-damn, it’s great to live in the Future!
chemix

Watching the ones bounce up and down (for the keyboard) looks almost too fluid to be real, like CGI, but I guess that might be the uncanny valley effect in reverse.