In its latest episode, the Robots
Podcast interviews the lead researcher of the Distributed Flight
Array and one of my colleagues at the ETH Zurich's IDSC,
Raymond Oung.
The Distributed Flight Array (DFA) is an aerial modular robot. Each
individual module has a single, large propellor and a set of omniwheels
to move around. Since a single propellor does not allow stable flight,
modules move around to connect to each other. As shown in this video
of the DFA, the resulting random shape then takes flight. After a
few minutes of hovering the structure breaks up and modules fall back to
the ground, restarting the cycle. As most projects at the IDSC, the DFA
is grounded in rigorous mathematics and design principles and combines
multiple goals: It serves as a real-world testbed for research in
distributed estimation and control, it abstracts many of the real-world
issues of the next generation of distributed multi-agent systems, and it
provides an illustration for otherwise abstract concepts like
distributed sensing and control to a general public. For more
information on current work, future plans and real-world applications,
read
on or tune
in!
