Thanks to a new artificial intelligence system, a robot helicopter can teach itself how to fly and perform challenging stunts just by watching other helicopters do the same maneuvers. The autonomous helicopter is able to carry out a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own, according to its inventors.

The stunts are “by far the most difficult aerobatic maneuvers flown by any computer-controlled helicopter,” said Andrew Ng, a professor at Stanford University who is directing the research of graduate students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter and Morgan Quigley.

The artificial intelligence helicopter, an off-the-shelf model other than its new brains, can perform traveling flips, rolls, loops, and stall-turns without pirouettes, just to name a few. It can even do the tic toc, where the helicopter hovers with a side to side motion while pointed straight up.

“I think the range of maneuvers they can do is by far the largest” in the autonomous helicopter field, said Eric Feron, a Georgia Tech professor who worked on autonomous helicopters while at MIT. “But what’s more impressive is the technology that underlies this work. In a way, the machine teaches itself how to do this by watching an expert pilot fly. This is amazing.”

A short clip of the helicopter can be viewed here.