Single Operator Can Fly Hundreds Of Drones At Once: Intel

Intel unveiled a tiny new drone today, the Shooting Star, designed specifically for light shows in the night sky. The designers have engineered the small quadcopter, weighing less than a pound, to fly alongside hundreds of other drones, all under the control of a single operator.

An individual pilot flew 500 Shooting Star drones simultaneously in early October, breaking the Guinness Book of World Records for most drones operated at once by a single pilot.

The flight took place in a small town outside of Munich, Germany, where Intel received a waiver from local regulators to perform the record-breaking flight.

Full-color-range LED lights pack each drone. The drones fly with the help of Intel’s automation software, which allows artists to design aerial animations with hundreds of drones.

It’s the type of coordination that would typically take weeks or months, but Intel says its system can design a complex light show in days.

In the drone world, Intel’s collision avoidance camera technology, Real Sense, is better known. It’s utilized in its industrial-grade Falcon 8 drone and Yuneec’s Typhoon H drone.tycoonstory.com/hitachi-develops-first-lensless-camera-technology-japan

The system enables drones to weave between obstacles without requiring piloting, but the new Shooting Star drones lack Real Sense capability.

The master computer and the operator on the ground exert complete control over the drones.

The drones also do not communicate with each other, so they operate as radio-controlled units rather than forming a swarm.

Although the Shooting Star is the company’s second fully-branded Intel drone—the first was the Falcon 8+ in October—neither is available for sale yet, and the company isn’t sharing how it plans to bring the technology to market.

But Intel’s renown stems from its incorporation of components like chips and microprocessors into computers, rather than from its hardware offerings. So until the company provides clarity about how others can buy and use its drones, the technology could just be a demonstration of what might one day end up in other machines, rather than Intel’s marketable product.