It’s what might appear to be the simple stuff that often leads to amazing scientific developments, which is why it’s awesome to watch these quadrotor drones at ETH Zurich working together with an elastic net to play catch. There are few things as simple for humans as playing catch — we learn how to do that practically right out of the womb– but for machines to be able not only to be coordinated and catch and fling the ball but to learn from their mistakes to correct themselves going forward, well, that’s a sign of… Rise of the Machines! Starring Chris Hardwick as 2nd Engineer! Oh, right, that’s been used….

You can easily imagine how this could lead to networked drones being used in tandem to remotely learn and do all sorts of things, like building and surgery and repair and, of course, wage war, and, oh, how about this, from earlier this year at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab:

Science!

HT: Popular Science