Roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP are able to get as many as 20 of their autonomous microcopters to fly in formation and perform complex maneuvers flawlessly.

In an impressive new video, the GRASP — General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception — team makes their swarm of flying microbots flip, change direction, navigate through obstacles and even fly figure-eights with jaw-dropping agility and precision.

GRASP has since 2010 made remarkable advancements in the capabilities of their tiny quadrotors, developed by Kmel Robotics, and documented them with a series of videos showing bots flying hoops and building a tower-like structure. The lab is developing the ability to fly autonomously in formation, communicating with each other to maintain position. Last year the team demonstrated a basic formation flight with a lost-communication demonstration where one of the aircraft drops out on its own.

There is still plenty of human input as the tiny UAVs are programmed to fly various tasks. No Skynet yet. Such machines could be used for surveillance or search-and-rescue missions. They’re also just plain cool to watch.

As we wait for the next trick, we hope becoming self aware is indeed just science fiction.

Video: YouTube/TheDmel

The Moody Aquarium Sink was designed by Italbrass, and will definitely light up your bathroom. This design piece features a completely removable top for cleaning, and features two circular entries on either side to ensure that feeding your fish friends is a breeze.

Rethinking the common uses for belts, the team at TING takes uses high quality belts, and gives them a second life on the floor of your home. The belts are mated to reconstituted leather backing creating modular floor tiles fit for a king.

Bamboo has become an extremely popular choice for all sorts of products over the last few years, and the trend shows absolutely no signs of slowing down either. Thanks to 23 year old UK design student Scott Whoodhouse, the world will now get their hands on the first ever bamboo phone dubbed the ADzero.

There are dream vacation destinations, and then there is the Six Senses Resort located in Laamu, Maldives. One look at this absolutely breathtaking villa overlooking the Indian Ocean, and you will know exactly what we mean.

More often than not, when an expatriate living in Bangkok answers a foreigner’s question regarding his or her residence, the response will be one of many variations, “Are you insane boy, what on earth are you going to do there?”

Bangkok has an international reputation as one of the most beautiful, ugly, hot, exciting, sophisticated, dirty, friendly, crowded, interesting and just plain confusing cities in the world. These and other descriptions are all accurate reflections of Bangkok, depending on the person’s perspective and own experiences.

The elephant in the room here at CES this year is truly Windows 8. Microsoft’s talking about it, but not much. Manufacturers have hardware that should be running Windows 8, but has Windows 7 onboard instead and they aren’t willing to say what their plans are. It’s a shroud of mystery that Microsoft is trying to maintain until the public beta is out come late February.

However, some demonstrations of the pre-beta software are on the floor here, and today, we managed to corner a Microsoftie and get some actual hands on time with a Windows 8 tablet. It’s truly exciting to see how far the device has come over the last few months. This is the same hardware that was given out at Microsoft BUILD back in September, just with updated bits inside. Here’s what you’ll see on an entirely stock Samsung Series 7 when it’s booted and logged into for the first time;

Take a look at awesome interior projects, created by PIXERS, a group of Polish designers, involved in architecture, art and interior design.

You can not stop the vintage at the moment, and for those who have had hands the famous Walkman, what more vintage than audio cassette.

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