At the recent Israeli maker event, Geekcon 2016, a group of 12 people made a real life version of Space Invaders using drones as aliens and a huge laser to shoot them down.

It works like this: the player is strapped into a cart that is on top of 20 metres of rail. The cart has a laser mounted on it, which they can shoot, in intervals, at a swarm of eight DJI Phantom 3s.

The drones, or should we say aliens, are the really clever part of the project. Each of them is outfitted with LEDs to mimic the classic aliens as well as an Arduino. A laser sensor is attached to this and if a player manages to hit it, the drone will turn its LED alien off and land safely on the ground signalling the death of an alien.

The drones are told what to do thanks to vHive software made to manage drone fleets. One person from the team, Tomer Daniel, works for vHive, so this was a natural fit.

From the two videos we managed to find of the project it seems they either named the project “SpacedOut” or “SpaceOdyssey”, the latter makes more sense if you take the music in the video into account.

If you want to see more videogames made to work in the real world, check out Rocket League accomplished with some RC cars, GoPros and a soccer field.

[Source – Hackaday