Quadcopter athleticism .... stunning

[XH558]

You may or may not have seen this .... I just happened upon it and was enthralled .... I wouldn';t recognise an algorithm if I tripped over it in the street .... these guys use them very effectively 

Raffaello D';Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters

This led me on to this ....

Vijay Kumar: Robots that fly ... and cooperate

Love it ....

[JT]

 Amazing stuff!

[barneyg]

OK I want the flight controller those use ... and while I';m at it the props look interesting too.

[ChrisH]

A long time since I have seen such interesting videos. 

+1 on amazing!

[XH558]

That pole balancing just knocked me out 

[Gaza07]

I have seen these before but they are well worth watching again   

[JT]

That pole balancing just knocked me out 

I have seen one where one quad throws a pole and another catches it.

Edit: Here it is
Quadrocopter Pole Acrobatics

[XH558]

   

[fruitsalad]

some cool stuff going on there ..

[Hands0n]

This is definitely very awesome stuff the chaps are doing. They feature on Ted Talks - a superb series of presentations on all things, some may surprise you a lot.  In the field of applied robotics the university people are making extraordinary breakthroughs.   I think it was these chaps who put on a show of autonomous in-building search and locate, intended for use in hazardous locations such as buildings on fire, that kind of stuff. Multirotors are the only things that can move around quickly enough through such environments.

[kilby]

The flight control system is a pair of fairly hefty PCs and 3 infrared cameras.

I';d say five ARM 3 months to bring out the next gen of 8 core processors and you will be close to having it