Ideas change everything

The astounding athletic power of quadcopters

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Raffaello D'Andrea |

TEDGlobal 2013

• June 2013

In a robot lab at TEDGlobal, Raffaello D'Andrea demos his flying quadcopters: robots that think like athletes, solving physical problems with algorithms that help them learn. In a series of nifty demos, D'Andrea show drones that play catch, balance and make decisions together -- and watch out for an I-want-this-now demo of Kinect-controlled quads.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

In a robot lab at TEDGlobal, Raffaello D'Andrea demos his flying quadcopters: robots that think like athletes, solving physical problems with algorithms that help them learn. In a series of nifty demos, D'Andrea show drones that play catch, balance and make decisions together -- and watch out for an I-want-this-now demo of Kinect-controlled quads.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

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About the speaker

Raffaello D'Andrea

Autonomous systems pioneer

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Raffaello D'Andrea explores the possibilities of autonomous technology by collaborating with artists, engineers and entrepreneurs.

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Since the Talk: Up, up and away

Since demoing his robots at TED, Raffaello D'Andrea has designed quadcopters that are even stronger and smarter than before. Here, three new features.

Quadcopters join the circus

In art, drones can be magical. See beautiful GIFs and a charming short film from a collaboration between Raffaello D'Andrea and Cirque du Soleil.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.