Micro helicopters, the kind that fit in the palm of your hand (and sometimes
spread holiday cheer) are huge fun -- and hugely frustrating. Have you ever tried to get one to hover in place next to another? Impossible! MIT thinks it can do that, not with just two but thousands of the little beggars all hovering in harmony as part of a project called Flyfire. By using LED-equipped drones the project pledges to build free-floating 3D displays, endowing them with enough smarts and positional awareness to organize themselves into an airborne canvas. It sounds deliciously exciting and challenging, yet for some reason the school has decided you aren't to know about it, pulling its concept video and website offline. We can only imagine there's a government agency involved here, possibly trying to stem the virulent spread of robo-socialism, but we invite you to leave your own conspiracy theories in comments.
Update: You can take your tinfoil hats off, the site and the video are both back online! We have the goods embedded after the break.
posted February 19th 2010 10:24AM
Rand was a visionary ... now we can implement that calendar in the sky!
Come back to me when the light is replaced with a bomb.
Swarm theory. The end is near!
It wasn't a government agency that removed the video, it was the robots. They mercilessly taunted the researchers until the video was removed. Then the robots made disparaging comments about people's mothers. Many tears were shed.
IRS collection swarms
I know MIT people are supposed to be smart. But Flyfire? As in "Firefly" but reversed?
They couldn't think of something like "Airborne Quantum Pixel" or something cool sounding?
@p0p0 They're trying to sell this to the military.
@Freakin Ijit
and you know that....
how?
@Freakin Ijit
and you know this.... how?
@Freakin Ijit yea they will make a dome from them and all incoming missiles will explode hitting them and thus not reaching the real target
The video is still online at http://senseable.mit.edu/flyfire/
Probably pulled from the site 'cos they, or a student, wants to go on and market the thing. Moneymoneymoney. A conspiracy of riches, not government.
A good concept, but if you're using helicopter blades next to each other it'll take some seriously fast corrective control to keep them all steady and a constant distance from eachother - especially if you put it in places like large shopping centres or conference halls where airflow is constant and turbulent - all that rising heat and circulating air around the walls & ceilings.
@Heliosphan
"Probably pulled from the site 'cos they, or a student, wants to go on and market the thing"
Doubtful since the idea alone has been around for a while...Read Michael Crighton, it's even mainstream. Now the code describing how they pull it off, that's where the $$ is.
@Heliosphan
Insects and birds can fly in highly organized spatial arrangements. Schools of fish can swim in a very organized manner too. Bacteria can swim in an organized manner too.
Heck, you can place floating magnets in water and they will arrange themselves in a hexagonal pattern even when the water sloshes some.
So, the point is engineers (especially MIT geeks, I know a few), make things more complicated than they need to be. If you think about it, coordinate spatial flight is challenging, but not as hard as you think it to be.
@Toy Yoda "So, the point is engineers (especially MIT geeks, I know a few), make things more complicated than they need to be.".
You're just bitter because your engineers botched the gas pedal.
@edoles
Hehe.... yeah.
No Video?? Well Mr. MIT, Massachusetts man... take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
I see a big issue, batteries
I had about the same idea about a year ago....but mine didn't have any protruding rotors......sigh
Didn't Bradbury write a story about this where a bunch of villagers spat on the tiny helicopters except for a little boy who saves the tiny helicopters comprising the smile?
...or something like that...
@ipxnsv
Yawn... call me when you don't need 1080000 batteries to run it.
You could use these in some stunning premium in-store advertising. It could also be really useful for part of a town-centre Christmas lights display, or 'switching on' event to add some extra pizazz. One problem I do see is that how do you get them all charged; after all, if you have a few hundred of these flying around, they're all going to need to re-juice at some point - would they have some kind of mass intelligent helipad like docking station that works through inductive charging to get them up and running again or what? Just a consideration that came to mind.
@meeku
This will be more useful and interesting in the distant future where everything draws power wirelessly, and the little orbs don't need rotors to fly...
As things like this get smaller and more efficient, the more impossible it becomes to hide from the inevitable one world government. Which most likely won't have interest in our well-being, the future looks grim but all we can do is hope I suppose.
Vegas is interested.
Imagine a render of some particle effects.
Coaxial helicopters are VERY stable. The tiny ones that fit in your palm are remarkably stable as well considering the poor and inconsistent build quality of the components.
Get yourself a proper coaxial helicopter w/ a gyro, and you'll very much be able to hover two next to each other with minimal practice.
What a waist of brain effort. Marvin is starvin, Klaus has no house but hey we got little robot copters that make pretty pictures!!!
@NeoSeer
You don't see how the tech behind the ability to control a swarm of drones can then be applied to other uses later?
Great concept. Nice flash animation.
Actually it's been thought of before in the last 4 years. Should be about 8-10yrs before they show the 1st working prototype. Website is more hype than showing anything working.
Next...
but... but... but... is the idea really to introduce several thousand mechanical devices, each with their own failure points into the air, from where they can fall on people, cars, go out of control and impede flight patterns, etc.
Michael Chrichton - Swarm anyone?
Good idea, but well, cost? seriously, this would cost a fortune to run and control, let alone the products,
Get those copters moving from scene to scene fast enough, and we won't need to wear glasses to see 3D!
@dajimmers do you think there will be more false sightings of UFO's if they do? This will really set the conspiracy theorists off
@ipxnsv
well, if these things really are beggars, not buggers, maybe they can get their own batteries.
would you give a AA to a little 'copter in need?
@ipxnsv
Time to get that whole wireless energy thing sorted out. I'm thinking drive-in movies. The whole country is invited.
Well, it's easy to see where the military would want this.
First, everyone knows our enemies are terribly afraid of cute little tiny flying lights.
Second, just imagine the psychological warfare possibilities.
Oh, Mr. Bad Guy, shoot at me will you? Your mistake; now, you will suffer the wrath of Golden Girls Season Two.
@crapple
Don't you mean 2073600000000 batteries?
OUCH! I was just hit by a dead pixel!