Raffaello D'Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters In a robot lab at TEDGlobal, Raffaello D'Andrea demos his flying quadcopters: robots that think like athletes, solving physical problems with algorithms that help them learn. In a series of nifty demos, D'Andrea show drones that play catch, balance and make decisions together -- and watch out for an I-want-this-now demo of Kinect-controlled quads. The part of the video where he balances a glass of water on the top of the quad is amazing.