The Voliro hexacopter has been developed, assembled and programmed as a student project at ETH Zurich.
It has the unique capability of being able to hover in any arbitrary orientation, even vertically or upside down. Unlike standard multicopters, the position and the orientation are completely decoupled and can be steered independently. This is achieved by six additional tilting motors which allow the rotor units to turn around its axes.
The Voliro hexacopter is a platform which expands the potential of conventional drones and allows many future applications. As it can fly vertically, it could also drive with a chassis on a wall and perform tasks like bridge inspection or creating paintings on the wall.
A team of 11 students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Zurich University of the Arts created Voliro. They’ve spent nine months working on the project so far, and have documented the whole journey. They plan to add an omnidirectional sphere to the drone in the future, so it can roll around on the ground.
Source: YouTube