Intel fly 300 quadcopters as part of the stunning Superbowl half time show.

G’day everybody, I’ve been getting non-stop calls and messages from friends and family about the quadcopters in the Superbowl half time show, so, I’m going to do that for them… At 2:00AM!

Curious about the tech behind the drone light show during the #SB51 #PepsiHalfTime show? #ExperienceMore https://t.co/88ljU31ux1

— Intel (@intel) February 6, 2017

If you didn’t notice, there were 300 of Intel’s Shooting Star quadcopters flying around as backup dancers to Lady Gaga. The entire swarm is controlled by one piece of software that maps out where they are going to fly, the quadcopters themselves have no way to sense or avoid each other, so the entire show relies very heavily on the software to map out a safe path for each quadcopter.

Image courtesy of techcrunch, you should go check them out!

Each Shooting Star has a housing made of Styrofoam with metal cages around the props and motors, to protect the quadcopters from mid air collisions. The Shooting Star quadcopters weigh about as much as a volley ball and don’t have any screws, they snap together. The big multicoloured LED on the bottom is the main focus of the Shooting Stars.

Intel has been working on these quads for a couple of years now. In 2015 Intel put 100 quadcopters in the air and in 2016 they put 500 into the air in conjunction with Disney World. Intel hopes to create a future where these drone fleets can accoplish more useful tasks such as, search and rescue, object and goods inspection, agriculture, bigger and better light-shows, mapping traffic, annoying your neighbors and more! The sky is the limit.

— The take away from this is that Intel are doing really cool things with quadcopters and we hope they don’t accidentally create Skynet… And please, please, stop asking me if I’ve seen the Intel drones. Yes. Yes I have seen them.
Regards,
Patrick Baxter.