The Swarm

Dave Schuler March 5, 2012

You might be interested in this short, fascinating, and slightly frightening video.

In this video

the quadrotors build small structures using modular parts.

2 comments… add one

michael reynolds Link

My son showed me this a while ago. Very interesting. I’m writing about nanotechnology lately and it felt vaguely related. Pretty soon those little helicopters will have facial recognition capability and tiny little missiles.
sam Link

The Marines now use a very small, really small, model-airplane-looking thing for recon. This no doubt is next. I can imagine each Marine or soldier carrying one or two of these things as a personal recon vehicle. Damn useful in urban combat, I’d think. As usual, the scifi folks were there first. In Dune, Herbert had hunter-seekers, used primarily for assassination:

The device floated through the air, using a tiny Holtzman Field Generator to maneuver. The tip held a camera that transmitted a video signal back to the operator. Vision was distorted by the compessed suspensor field. Once detected, the target was almost guaranteed to be killed.

The killing device itself was a tiny needle, tipped with a quick-acting, lethal poison. The needle was retracted until a target is acquired, at which point it appeared, shortly before the device shot into the victim.