A new video released by the Digital Futures research project Drone Gymnasium offers a glimpse into an experimental space where drones become tools for creativity, reflection, and human exploration rather than machines with fixed purposes.
Led through a collaboration between researchers in robotics, interaction design, and autonomous systems, the project investigates how people might interact with drones in more embodied, imaginative, and participatory ways. The newly published YouTube video documents a six-day staging of the Drone Gymnasium, where participants — referred to as patrons — were invited to create their own experiences and interactions with drones using a wide range of physical accessories, equipment, and expert guidance.
The project brings together expertise from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Digital Futures, and Bitcraze, the Malmö-based developer of open-source drone technology.
Rather than defining drones around predetermined industrial tasks, the Drone Gymnasium asks a broader question: what could robots become if people were invited to shape their meaning and use together?
The project explores how “training accessories” — physical tools and movement-based interfaces — can support drone programming and human-drone interaction. By distributing the cognitive load of controlling drones across the whole body, the researchers aim to create more meaningful and embodied relationships with autonomous systems.
The initiative builds on earlier work from the Digital Futures Drone Arena demonstrator project and combines the expertise of Professor Luca Mottola in mobile robotics and autonomous systems with Professor Kristina Höök’s pioneering work in Soma Design and movement-based interaction design.
The project is co-lead by Joseph La Delfa, who liaises between the gymnasium and industry partner Bitcraze, said the Drone Gymnasium represents a new way of thinking about autonomous technology:
“The Drone Gymnasium challenges the idea that drones should only exist for predefined tasks. By creating a space where people can experiment, reflect, and invent together, we begin to see autonomous systems less as tools and more as collaborative materials for everyday life.”
The project is also lead by Rachael Garrett, whose research focuses on ethics in the design of autonomous systems. Garrett additionally serves as an international collaborator with the Turing AI World-Leading Fellowship Somabotics: Creatively Embodying AI, contributing perspectives on how embodied interaction and participatory design can shape more socially responsible autonomous technologies. Rachael Garrett explains :
“What makes the Drone Gymnasium exciting is that it creates space for people to question and reshape their relationship with autonomous systems. Instead of treating AI and robotics as fixed technologies imposed on society, participants are invited to explore how these systems might reflect human values, movement, creativity, and care.”
Throughout the six-day installation, ambiguity was treated as an intentional part of the creative process. Participants were encouraged to explore, improvise, and reflect on how drones could behave, communicate, and coexist with humans in future living and working environments.
The researchers describe the Drone Gymnasium as a step toward integrating autonomous technology into everyday life “together” — not only through engineering, but through shared experimentation, movement, ethics, and design.
The newly released video captures these interactions and offers a vision of how future human-robot relationships may emerge through participation and embodied experience rather than purely technical optimisation.
The Drone Gymnasium video webpage
Photos: Fredrik-Ehrenstrale and Chris-Kitsidis
