How to play tennis and fly at the same time

Researchers use helicopters for lots of things, but now they’ve even got them playing tennis in mid-air!

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control have been carrying out various test with quadrotors, which have four rotors instead of a helicopter’s one.

Although skilled pilots can do great things with a quadrotor, automated control systems find high speed and rapid manoeuvres very tricky. Researchers at the institute have been using newer control systems and programmes that learn, in an attempt to improve the flight performance of automated quadrotors.

The latest video from the institute, shown below, shows two quadrotors volleying a tennis ball back and forth between them. Instead of human pilots, two computers and an overhead motion capture system take charge.

“We’re very happy that it works, but we have quite a way to go,” says Sergei Lupashin. “A really neat thing would be to have it at a level where it can play competitively (or cooperatively) with a human player. One day, you could imagine playing something like quidditch with these vehicles!”

Image by Mark Müller

 

Get the Flash Player to see this video!

Transcript

Source: ETH Zurich, IDSC

Comments (0)

---

There are no comments at the moment.

You may add a comment about this video by logging in to your account.