- Description: Flying robot quadrotors 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.
Penns 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.
The engineers from Penn, Daniel
Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev, have formed a company called KMel
Robotics that will design and market these quadrotors.
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