The quadrotors at the University of Pennsylvania make the news with some frequency. They're a swarm of autonomous, mini-helicopters that researchers have programmed to perform a variety of tasks, demonstrating that swarms of robots in the future could potentially do the work of teams of humans. They flying swarms are able to fly in formation, get around obstacles, and find each other again in the air when the patterns are disrupted. And they've shown they can build structures. Now the team has the flying robots playing music.

The instruments have infrared lights and cameras, which help the quadrotors navigate perfectly. That's because each robot has a reflector that the camera can see. A computer uses that information to plot the robot's exact position and direct it to the next location.

via i09 and the University of Pennsylvania

Credit: Screen grab from video