LAS VEGAS—The International Consumer Electronics Show has just begun, but the trade show has already spawned a dance. But if you'd prefer not to see a conference full of tech industry professionals start to shimmy, fear not: The ones doing the boogeying, in this case, aren't human. The "Flying Robot Dance," instead, features flying automata (quadrotors, in this case) that hover and whizz and even tumble, all in delightful synchrony.
The dance, and the video of it, premiered at the techy trade show in Vegas today—to be watched, if not emulated, by the conference's human attendees. But if the video above looks familiar, it's because it's actually a sequel—a follow-up effort from KMel Robotics and Yuneec International, the collaboration that brought you the epic 2012 video "Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme."
And what 2014's flying robots lack in Bond, they make up for in Bend: These are some extremely agile little quadrotors. "Dancing," after all, when you're talking about robots, is less about rhythm and more about control—and the video, cheeky as it may be, is a testament to the precise movements that the quadrotors are able to achieve as they fly (and float, and flip) through the air.
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