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.
Flyability, a spin off company from LIS, EPFL and NCCR Robotics, has won the $1M inaugural UAE Drones for Good competition with Gimball, the world’s first crash resilient drone.
Generally, flying robots are programmed to avoid obstacles, which is far from easy in cluttered environments. At the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, we think that flying robots should be able to physically interact with their surroundings. Take insects: they often collide with obstacles and continue flying afterwards. We thus designed GimBall, a flying robot that can collide with objects seamlessly. Thanks to a passively rotating spherical cage, it remains stable even after taking hits from all sides. This approach enables GimBall to fly in the most difficult places without complex sensors.
January 18, 2021
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