The Grasp Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania developed a quadcopter with a robotic arm, that is able to “grasp”, like an eagle does.

The grasping action was successfully tested to a speed up to 3 m/s (7,2 Km/h).

Successful in-flight grasping of a target item with robotic multirotor

Considering this is now done with a flying robot, the achievement is quite impressive. And in a way, possibly scary. Will we see a world with big multirotors grasping the “bad guys” from the streets? Well, at least not until the FAA have sorted out an appropriate regulation for commercial civilian flights 🙂

The following video was actually posted on February 7 2013 and no other updates have been available on the channel since then.

The age of machines is coming closer, make sure you have the red pill ready, or maybe…

Stay tuned on the Personal Drones Blog for the latests news on multirotor research!