Back in December, I posted a little teaser preview of a talented quadrotor juggling a ball at ETH Zurich's entirely awesome Flying Machine Arena. That quadrotor has been practicing, and has even enlisted a friend. Hey look, now robots can amuse themselves!
Besides the quadrotors, what makes this all possible is an extremely sophisticated motion capture system, so it's unlikely that you'll see these skills (or these skills, for that matter) outside of a tightly controlled environment.
For the record, these are easily the most impressive juggling robots in recent memory, which includes one or two or three or four other bots. Now seriously, put a net up there and let's have ourselves some robot volleyball already.
[ ETH - IDSC ]
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.
