The flying robots that Vijay Kumar and his team have built are breathtaking. In this TED talk, he explains how the flying machines work, shows how they can fly in formation to construct simple structures, perform astonishing acrobatics, and explore and map out empty buildings autonomously. Obviously it doesn’t take much to think of more sinister uses of this technology, but another more positive application, shown at the end, shows a considerable amount of imagination…it is worth watching this to the end which is laugh-out-loud funny.

[ted id=1376]