Your mom always warned you that those fireworks could put an eye out. However, the hottest new thing in fireworks displays is not pyrotechnic at all. Instead, a swarm of coordinated drones take to the sky with different lighting effects. This makes some pretty amazing shows possible, granting full control of direction, color, and luminosity of each light source in a mid-air display. It also has the side benefit of being safer — could this be the beginning of the end for fireworks accident videos blazing their way across social media platforms?
For an idea of what’s possible with drone swarm displays, check out the amazing pictures found on this site (machine translation) that show off the 3D effects quite well. Note that although it appears the camera is moving during many of these, the swam itself could be rotated relative to a stationary viewer for a similar effect.
What I couldn’t find was much going on here in the hobby space. Granted, in the United States, restrictive drone laws might hamper your ability to do things like this. But it seems that in a purely technical terms this wouldn’t be super hard to do — at least for simple designs. Besides, there must be some way to do this in US airspace since drone performances have been at the Super Bowl, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Folsom, CA.
So if the regulations were sorted, what would it take to build a swarm of your own performing drones?
The Challenge of Air Traffic Control
The hardest part would be keeping the aircraft in tight formation. Depending on how tight you wanted it, GPS might be sufficient, with the option of springing for differential GPS or some other higher resolution solution. The more difficult bit is avoiding mid-air collisions. Drones take a bit of real estate to correct from unexpected velocity change and even a small bump between two could cascade like three-dimensional dominoes through the swarm. You’d need to make sure none of them were crossing the same volume of space at the same time with enough margin of error to account for position uncertainty, wind gusts, and so forth.
According to an article from earlier in the year, many companies build their own hardware and software, some specializing in outdoor GPS-based shows while other focus on indoor presentations. That article mentions the distance between drones can be between 1.5 and 3 meters. To help with safety concerns, some companies use tiny drones which also makes a lot of sense in terms of maneuverability.
I’ve have seen some control software for setting up shows. It supports many different kinds of drones, including the relatively cheap Spark. There is a GitHub with some examples of using it — it is apparently using Blender for the animation parts. Of course, there are also competitors.
So Where is the Open Source?
I’m frankly surprised at the lack of open source or DIY projects. The most obvious limitation would be cost, as even a small display will call for dozens of drones, which need to be built, stored, transported, and tested. But considering some of the huge installations build for hacker camps it’s not outside of the realm of possibility. The widespread hunger for consumer drones means a wide set of ready-made drones are both available and affordable and much has been done to reverse engineer firmware on the most ubiquitous models.
I think almost everything you need on the software side is already out there in some form. Obviously, Blender can do the animation. There are already Open Source autopilots. There was some work on something called OpenDroneControl, but it hasn’t been active for awhile.
So am I just missing it? Are there some open source tools that are at least marginally easy to use? Or is this a ripe ground for some hacking projects? Tell us in the comments if you’ve done any swarming and how you did it. Or, if you know of any tools we should be aware of, chime in with that, too.
Drones as a replacement for firework is like watching firework on TV, it is no replacement but a totally different thing.
I like smoke, explosions you can feel in your stomach and all the sounds involved.
(And a kg of homemade black-powder costs 5 euro)
I would think one would need a good amount of space to develop something like this. Not only for fear of hurting someone but also so you can easily recover anything that might fall out of the sky. Personally, I wouldn’t say this is much safer than traditional fireworks, if at all.
Beyond the novelty of something you never saw before, those shows really don’t hold up against aerial explosives. The shows probably won’t go away, but I expect them to be equivalent to a laser show before long…and maybe a lot less than that once we have Amazon drones flying around on a regular basis.
Ahem… Laser shows can be pretty darn cool.
I really need to purchase some. Elliot,do you have any idea?
You’re right, a swarm of drones won’t make an enormous cloud of noxious smoke, and they won’t start any fires, so of course drones will not give you all the pleasure and joy that comes from watching your house burn down.
LoL, I’d actually be more concerned about charging a bunch of drones as far as fire risk goes, at least with a professional show. Kids playing with fireworks is another story, but that’s not really what we are talking about when comparing to a drone show.
Plus, have you ever met a fireworks technician? If they didn’t have structured shows to run those guys would be going around burning buildings down just to scratch the pyro itch. A lot of them work for less than the cost of the gas to get to the show, and it’s mostly setup and tear down. But they happily take spend a weekend doing basically free labor, often in the July sun, just so they can set off fireworks.
Disney hasn’t done this yet?
Of course they have! https://youtu.be/dHHMrvaXgyA
Well drone swarms may not replace fireworks but they would be very intriguing for advertisements, they would make the ads in Blade Runner look like crap!
I can has emacs in drone VT100, plz?
“Haz”, not “has.”
Gawd, lern 2 spel.
Glorious…. And no (local) air pollution!
Go, China!
explains the recent uptick of UFO sightings the Western USA
That and peyote smoking in New Mexico and Arizona, and all the maryjane in Colorado blanketing everything else.
Or combine ’em all. Fireworks/rockets, drones, and lasers. Drones firing fireworks, drones firing lasers, ground-based fireworks firing at drones, ground-based lasers firing at fireworks and drones. (c:
And more cowbell!
Sounds like a great show! Don’t forget the drones with smoke machines to make the lasers more impressive.
Relevant?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HuGHV0fbBiE
My guess is the price involved in it is the main factor. You need a lot of brain in the drone and it makes it expensive
Is just me or it reminds flash gordon movie with birdman in the sky writing text.
Drone Swarms is $1B+ worth business
so HAD has never heard of CrazySwarm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0CrjoYDt9w
https://crazyswarm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
I’d be curious to hear the the real on-site sound of these drone swarms, rather than the breathless music tracks – like a cloud of noisy wasps?
OK, that video above on crazy swarm gives us a taste of the sound… multiply by 100.
Semi-related from a story on last night’s network news: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mysterious-drones-swarm-over-colorado-nebraska-unleashes-origin-theories-n1108941
Of course it’s a uncorroborated third hand description, but a drone with a six foot wing span?
I, for one, can’t wait until someone figures out how to attach lighted Space Invader figures to a bunch of drones so I can play a giant space invaders game in the sky.