Drones are capable of bringing magic into reality

Oct 14, 2014 13:05 GMT  ·  By

We’re used to seeing inanimate objects come to life in virtually every fantasy movie Hollywood has produced in the last years (remember the living Ents, old trees, in Lord of the Rings?). But these special effects are actually the results of long hours of work in animations labs.

As cool as computer-generation animations such as these look, they can’t step out of screen and make an appearance in live shows like the ones you attend at the theater or the circus. So how could one go about if they wanted to bring magic into real life?

A team of eager researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) has been working for the past five years on what they are calling “athletic quadcopters.” These are actually drones that were designed to take advantage of built-in algorithms that instruct the machine to solve a problem the way a human might approach it.

Cirque du Soleil does magic via technology

And in an unlikely turn of events, their project caught the attention of the famous Cirque du Soleil. The two entities decided to partner up and the result… well, you can watch it below and see for yourself (as spotted at The Creators Project).

We’ll just tell you the video is called “Sparked” and is a totally effect-free short movie starring a repairman and a bunch of lampshades that suddenly come to life.

As you might have guessed it, the lampshades are actually quadcopters in disguise. Verity Studios which operates under ETH shot the mini-clip at the Flying Machine Arena, which has been used by researchers for development, testing and demonstration of flying machines.

The story of the mini movie goes like this, the repairman is in his shop working on several lamps, when a fuse blows, living him in the dark, wondering what he did wrong.

The video features flying, dancing lampshades

This is the moment when the sneaky lampshades come alive in a symphony of color and light. The drones are actually able to mirror the movements of the surprised repairman, so when he waves his arms, the lights spin and turn too.

The robotic choreography is a result of algorithms that combine data picked up from the drones and a motion capture system that acts like a GPS system.

But to give the sensation of a smooth-sailing dance, ETH had to fine-tune the positioning algorithms ever more, because maneuvering drones in close-vicinity is more complex, as opposed to when you're dealing with just one.

Sure, the dance of the drones in disguise is composed of simple-enough movements, but as the computer control becomes more precise, a larger palette of performance and movement will be allowed, something that will open to door to a lot of interesting new applications in the future.