This video was shot by Flickr user ldrose two hours after the live demo of SmartBird inside the auditorium at TEDGlobal. Festo engineers brought the bird outside to Holyrood Park, in central Edinburgh, and sent it up into the sky. Eyewitnesses tell us that, almost immediately, out of an empty sky, SmartBird was swarmed by seagulls, dozens of them, each taking a turn to dive at the giant bird. The video tells the story … and YouTube user finesoftwarewritings captures the whole sequence in the 4-minute clip below:

Here’s another SmartBird swarm video, from Paul Kemp-Robertson at Contagious magazine …