Who needs a dog when you can have a drone?

Researchers from Switzerland’s ETH Zurich have developed a drone that can play catch until either you get bored, or it runs out of battery.

This humble little “omnicopter” is able to zip around at lightning speeds making it perfect for tasks that require fast reactions.

What makes this drone different from the ones you’ll see clogging up your local park is the way that it flies.

Rather than having four rotors all facing in a single direction this drone has eight all facing in different directions.

That means that it can react far quicker than a conventional drone. To give you some idea of just how much faster, the drone is able to generate 500,000 trajectories every single second.

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At the moment the drone’s swiftness is thanks to an external camera that maps both the ball and the drone. The computer then creates a path for the drone and the drone then reacts.

While it all happens in the blink of an eye it’s the external camera that helps give the drone a true understanding of its surroundings.

We know you’re wondering when you can get hold of your new robotic pet and in that regard we have some bad news. You can’t buy one. Instead this little drone’s purpose is to help create much larger drones that are required to think incredibly fast and react just as quickly.

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