Drones, lights and nature combine in Drone Courtship, a short movie about a magical encounter between two flying robots set in a forest of centennial trees. A collaboration between Atelier D. Schlaepfer and Flyability, and filmed without special effects, the movie shows how robots can transform onscreen into living creatures.
AdrienB's Posts (3)
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We wanted to share a fun video we made recently. Our drones can interact with obstacles and humans, which is opening amazing new applications, be it for accessing hard-to-reach places or for having fun with them.
We achieve that through a passively rotating protective cage an control algorithms that keep the drone stable at all times. More than just a protective cage, the fact that it can rotate really prevents collisions from disturbing the orientation of the drone (see animation below). Also, because the cage is decoupled, the apparent inertia is quite low and the drone is very reactive.
Hope you enjoyed, we look forward to show you more in the near future !
Flyability is a young spin-off from EPFL based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Please read more at www.flyability.com if you're interested.
Cheers,
Adrien
PS: We're currently shipping evaluation kits to professional users.
PS2: We're always looking for talented engineers (jobs@flyability.com)
Members of DIY Drones using optical flow sensors, such as the ADNS3080 that is available in the DIYDrones store, or the Centeye vision sensors might be interested in the work I presented last week at ICRA.
The method, described in the video above, allows to calibrate the viewing direction of optic-flow sensors thanks to a very simple calibration process as long as you have a 3-axis rate gyroscope. It is particularly useful when one needs a correct orientation for de-rotation (removing the component induced by rotation from an optic-flow vector), but it is generally useful for all types of applications, from obstacle avoidance to ego-motion estimation.
The paper can be downloaded here and the code for off-line calibration here.
