Drones Away

If you were among the millions of people who watched the Super Bowl LI halftime show from Houston, Texas,  you’re probably wondering how they were able to get drones to fly and flash in the sky in unison over Houston.

According to a post on TechCrunch, the display was actually taped earlier in the week using over 300 Intel Shooting Star Drones flying over Houston. They’re calling it a fleet display. It is pretty cool to not only see but take a peek at the preparation to see how they made it work.

Each drone was individually pre-programmed using Intel software.

Other than the pre-loaded flight information, the devices do not talk to each other and lack the ability to detect collisions. Each drone has a large LED on the bottom.

The company says the display is scalable with the ability to have more than 10,000 drones in the air at the same time.

The first display using the drones was performed over Disneyworld at Orlando, Florida this past December. That display also used 300 drones in the air. However, they actually had 600 drones at the ready. At launch time the Intel software determines which of the drones are fully charged and ready for flight.