We stumbled across this little beauty the other day and our nostrils twitched immediately. Was that really a quadcopter which had been programmed to work out how to hit a ball back to a human target? Well it sure looks like it. In fact this is part of a research program from the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, which is looking into what they call ‘trajectory generation’. What we see is a future where competitive sports get **really** interesting.

What the video shows are two quadcopters playing a very rudimentary game of tennis (or ball hit and return) by themselves. What’s remarkable is how accurately these guys can deliver the ball to the target, which promises immense things for sports in the future.

Imagine a scenario where instead of just having human teams playing on a field, there would be new games which involved machines like these as well. It would immediately give the whole affair a new kind of buzz, since you’d be able to combine the precision of machines with the random genius of star athletes and come up with…what? Who knows.

But our mind is buzzing! More info here.