Video Monday: Robot Snake Monster, Nao in a Ball Pit, and Holidays Are Over

What with us taking a little bit of a break for the holidays and all, our last Video Friday post missed out on some holiday-themed robot videos. Since I’m sure you haven’t had nearly enough holiday cheer by now, here’s what we (and maybe you) missed over the past few weeks. Plus more, as we spend the week at CES looking for robots.

According to this video, DJI Phantom 2s have some sort of hidden and not at all creepy autonomous tree-decorating mode:

Now I’m just waiting for someone to actually try this at home, because disaster.

For something slightly more realistic and practical, this next video shows how to assemble DJI's Dropsafe drone-mounted parachute cannon:

[ DJI ]

The University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute (UTARI) convinced their assemblage of research robots to cooperate with each other to wrap and deliver presents:

[ UTARI ] via [ RoboHub ]

Here’s a feel-good video from iRobot, featuring a bunch of people who almost certainly aren’t you getting Roombas for free:

[ iRobot ]

“Peace Joy Robots: 28 Sphero robotic balls all independently programed and controlled by 4 smartphones to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve / Sarajevo". Each ball had to be precisely choreographed and the complex dance routine written measure by measure.”

I'm now wondering when we’ll see a display made entirely of Sphero robots acting as pixels.

[ Sphero ]

I think I tried to do this once at Chuck E. Cheese’s, but NAO has way better form:

[ TheAmazel ]

And that’s it for the leftover holiday vids, but here’s some more non-holiday stuff to catch up on:

In early 2012, jamming grippers learned to throw stuff. Nearly three years later, we finally have a practical application for the technology, exactly as one of our commenters predicted: 

[ Empire Robotics ]

I would do this to every single drone if only I could jump as high as a kangaroo:

Well, okay, maybe I wouldn’t punch Ikhana, because we like Ikhana.

The Ikhana unmanned aircraft system (UAS) just played a huge role in providing live video coverage on December 5, 2014, of NASA's Orion spacecraft splashdown and recovery. Based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, the Ikhana, which is flown by human pilots in a ground station, is a flying testbed also used for NASA earth science and aeronautics research.

[ NASA ]

It was only a matter of time before someone (CMU in this case) took a bunch of modular snake robots and stuck them all together to make a hexapod that is of course called “Snake Monster”:

Now please add a big pair of googly eyes on the front.

[ CMU ]