Distributed Flight Array

At the Insti­tute for Dynam­ic Sys­tems and Con­trol at ETH Zurich, research­ers have been explor­ing a futur­ist­ic concept since 2008: mod­u­lar fly­ing robots that can autonom­ously coordin­ate, dock with each oth­er mid-ground, and fly togeth­er as a single aer­i­al plat­form. Once air­borne, these units hov­er for sev­er­al minutes before des­cend­ing back to the ground—a grace­ful demon­stra­tion of advanced robot­ics and con­trol sys­tems.

To com­mu­nic­ate this com­plex research in a com­pel­ling way, I cre­ated a concept anim­a­tion that visu­al­izes how these indi­vidu­al fly­ing mod­ules work in sync. Each unit was anim­ated using motion cap­ture data, ensur­ing a real­ist­ic and tech­nic­ally accur­ate por­tray­al of the system’s beha­vi­or. Through dynam­ic cam­era move­ments and 3D com­pos­i­tion, the anim­a­tion cap­tures the eleg­ance and innov­a­tion of the pro­ject while mak­ing its abstract mech­an­ics visu­ally intu­it­ive.