Zurich team shows high speed tethered quadrocopters
A video has emerged which shows quadrocopters tied to a pole with rope, and they perform something called "cooperative acrobatics." IEEE Spectrum's Evan Ackerman said Thursday that watching the quadrocopters go around in circles as they do is not boring. Dizzying but not boring.
The quadrocopters are carefully tracked with a motion capture system. Ackerman said they top out at more than 50 kilometers per hour while flying in a circle with a radius of just 1.7 meters. To keep them from "flying off into oblivion," said Ackerman, a tether exerts over 13 gs of centripetal force.