Many see small quadrocopters as the future of surveillance,
aerial photography, warfare and even construction, but a new demonstration involving a world
record-setting swarm of 50 quadrocopters has shown the aircraft can also pull
off some pretty impressive dance moves.
Outdoing the efforts of the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab, the quadrocopter swarm put on a choreographed
air show over the river Danube in Linz, Austria, as part of the annual
Klangwolke (Cloud of Sound) open-air multimedia musical event that kicked off
on September 1st.
The aerial display was put together by a team from Austria’s
Ars Electronica Futurelab and Germany’s Ascending Technologies GmbH. The Ars
Electronica team was responsible for creating the computerized choreography and
equipping the standard model Hummingbird quadrocopters supplied by Ascending
Technologies with special radio receivers and modified firmware. The vehicles
were also equipped with LEDs to put on an eye-catching nighttime display.
With the theme of this year’s Klangwolke being how the world
has become interconnected, from the discovery of electricity, to
telecommunications, through to the invention of the internet, the quadrocopter
swarm was intended to symbolize the virtual network and digital communities of
our time.
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