Researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois have built a drone that rotates so fast that it is cloaked by motion blur. The new Phantom Twist drone spins at 25 times per second, which, thanks to a quirk of human vision, makes it appear like a faint smudge in the air. The video below shows it off to great effect, but I hope they can do something about the whiny noise.
The first demonstration of the Phantom Twist took place as part of a Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 presentation on Thursday. “Most efforts to hide drones focus on making them look like their surroundings,” said Northwestern’s Michael Rubenstein, who led the work. “Instead, we asked whether we could design the drone itself around the way humans perceive motion. This idea of low visibility through persistent motion is something few people have explored.”
The stationary photo of the Phantom Twist reveals a rather unique drone design, far removed from the now traditional quadcopter. It has just one motor and one propeller, and while the propeller spins in one direction, and the rest of the drone spins in the opposite direction, explains the Northwestern University blog.
AI was used to refine the design
The researchers tasked a computational model to generate roughly 20,000 drone configurations capable of stable flight. Subsequently, they applied AI and other optimization algorithms to repeatedly rearrange the drones’ major components, including a motor, propeller, circuit board, counterweight and batteries.
After narrowing down the candidates to around 500, the engineers superimposed simulated drones in flight over a hundred real-world backgrounds. A perception model then whittled down the designs based on their visibility scores. According to Rubenstein this entire process was automated, and only “when we were confident that a drone met all our criteria, we built it.” The demonstrated Phantom Twist drone is apparently “10 times less visually perceptible than a conventional quadcopter” according to the researcher’s visibility metrics.
Yes, the team knows that the Phantom Twist drone is rather noisy, and the visual impact of its wires and support rods could be reduced. Thus, work is planned to utilize more transparent materials and / or quieter propulsion systems in upcoming revisions.
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