Drinking a cup of coffee with your eyes closed isn't a sophisticated task for a person, but it's hard for a robot.

Our nano-quadrotor robots are made to be as lightweight as possible: less than a fifth of a pound and palm-sized. They can do an aerial backflip in half a second, accelerate at two Gs, and fly rotor blade to rotor blade in three-dimensional formations - and they do all this autonomously.

If you want a robot to maneuver aggressively, it has to be small. As you scale things down, the 'moment of inertia' - the resistance to angular motion - drops dramatically.

Vijay Kumar Quotes