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Lady Gaga's Superbowl halftime show was backed by 300 drones from Intel

By Marcus Wong - on 7 Feb 2017, 2:36pm

Lady Gaga's Superbowl halftime show was backed by 300 drones from Intel

Now here’s an interesting application of drone technology. For the halftime show of yesterday’s Super Bowl, Lady Gaga took the stage, backed by some 300 drones from Intel with color-shifting LED lights attached.

The drones are called “Shooting Stars”, and are controlled by Intel via a main computer. Yesterday, they made beautiful patterns in the sky as Gaga sang and danced below, such as the American flag, Intel’s logo, and main sponsor Pepsi’s logo (skip forward to the 0:28 mark). But it wasn’t the first time they’ve performed – 600 Shooting Stars were used back in December in Partnership with Disney to create a fantastical display over the happiest place on Earth.

Surprisingly, the somewhat complicated flights the drones perform are powered by a simple desktop suite of programs, with each drone getting an individual flight pattern, as opposed to communicating and moving in unison with each other.

The drones were created in partnership with artists and tech researchers at Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria. Each drone is made of plastic and styrofoam and weighs only 280g, allowing them greater mobility.

The pilot program in 2015 started with just 100 drones and required four pilots, but the technology has improved since then, allowing the team to put 500 drones in the air at once. As you can see from the video above, all 500 drones can be controlled from a single laptop and one pilot, though the company recommends having another set of laptop and pilot as backup.

Intel has been putting quite a bit of effort into drone research of late, saying that they hope to advance the technology to the point where we can start looking at using drones for search and rescue missions and even potentially as a responsive 3D display. We’re probably several years away from technology reaching those levels, but safe to say, those would be welcome breakthroughs indeed.

Sources: Adorama Learning Center, Ars Electronica Futurelab, Intel, ESPN YouTube channel

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