Walmart and Intel have sent 1,000 drones into the sky over Phoenix to help spread a little Christmas joy after a long, hard year. The show marks the fifth one in a tour the two companies are doing across the U.S., with three remaining.
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Retail giant Walmart has partnered with Intel to bring drone light shows to eight locations around the US after a very tough year. The drone light shows will be holiday-themed and will allow up to five people per car to attend.
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CNET spoke with Intel Drone Chief, Anil Nanduri about flying cars, flying taxis, and drones at the All About Autonomy 2019 conference. Here are a few of the highlights of the article.
One of the highlights of yesterday’s Super Bowl LIII, at least for drone enthusiasts, was the first-ever live drone light show during the Super Bowl Halftime Show. During the “She Will Be Loved” song from Maroon 5, 150 enhanced Intel Shooting Star drones floated up and over the field in a choreographed performance to the music to form the words “ONE” and “LOVE.” The drones were modified to look like floating lanterns.
You can see more details of the Intel Shooting Star drones in the images below. There’s also a video embedded, in case you missed the halftime event entirely.
The Christmas Spectacular show with the Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall in New York is one of those must-see shows during the Holiday season. The show has become an annual tradition for a lot of people and over the many decades of the show’s existence little has changed. For instance, the oldest and perhaps most famous aspect of the show, ‘The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers‘ has been a staple since 1933. For this year, however, the organization behind the Christmas Spectacular show has decided to change things up a little by adding Intel Shooting Star Mini drones to the mix and creating an entire new finale, called ‘Christmas Lights’. See the video below.
Last night in San Francisco, Audi kicked off the global launch of their new e-tron all-electric, five-passenger mid-sized SUV with an indoor and outdoor drone light show. The show consisted of a total of 850 Intel Shooting Star drones, 300 of which were part of the outdoor show that greeted the 1,600 guests who were brought in by boat from the Embarcadero to Richmond’s historic Craneway Pavilion. The remaining 550 drones put up a second shot that took place both indoors and outdoors to wow the audience.
Studio Drift showed off their mesmerizing Franchise Freedom drone light show on Tuesday night during Burning Man 2018. You may have heard of Studio Drift before as they performed another drone show in Miami earlier this year in partnership with BMW. For that show as well as the on during Burning Man, 300 of Intel® Shooting Star™ drones were used.
To celebrate their 50th anniversary Intel lit up the skies over their Folsom, California facility with a record-breaking 2,018 Shooting Star drones. This is not the first time we have seen Intel put up drones shows. They have done it before at locations such as the Bellagio in Las Vegas, CES, Coachella, Pride, Johannesburg and most famously the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, breaking records along the way. More recently, Intel has been getting competition from Ehang, that held the previous record with a display of 1,374 drones.
Since its beginning in 2015, Anil Nanduri has led Intel’s drone group with titles of Vice President and General Manager. Through exploring different commercial applications, Intel has done things like light shows with hundreds of so-called ‘Shooting Star’ drones flying in synchronization as well as advanced aerial surveying with their drone hardware and software applications. As a part of NASA’s Advisory Council Aeronautics Committee, Nanduri will meet regularly with NASA Administrators to offer advice.
Drones light shows are nothing new, we have seen them popping up at different events since Lady Gaga’s halftime performance at Super Bowl LI when synchronized drones took to the sky for a light show. The technology company behind these drone performances is Intel, and just the other day ABSA Bank rehearsed a small show above the Johannesburg skyline.
According to Intel 300 of its ‘Shooting Star’ drones lit up the skies during the LGBTQ event in Folsom, California. Intel’s drones displayed many different shapes in the sky, including the Pride flag and same-sex symbols, underscoring “the company’s commitment to equality.”
A commercial drone pilot from Rhode Island was making $2,000 a day back in 2015. Now he only gets about $175 dollars per day for the same work. Ever since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) started to allow commercial drone flights the unmanned aerial devices have come down in price while at the same time their capabilities have improved and the competition has increased tremendously resulting in dramatically lower prices. Noticeably, the new competition is not only from other smaller players but increasingly from large companies such as General Electric, Intel Corp., Verizon Communications and other well-funded startups like PrecisionHawk and Airware.
This year about 1,790 students competed for almost $5 million in prizes from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. A 19-year-old student from Barker College in Sydney, Australia took home the top prize of $75,000 with a window cleaning drone.
Chinese Ehang, a name you may recognize from their flying taxi, just broke the Guinness World Record record for largest drone display with a fleet of 1,374 drones at a Labour Day show in Xi’an, breaking Intel’s previous record of 1,218 drones flown during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. During the first rehearsal flight, all went well and Ehang was able to secure the record, however, during the live performance on May 1st signal interference from the audience may have caused some drones to break formation and some even fell out of the sky. Expand
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Today at AUVSI Xponential, Intel announced hardware and software updates to the commercial drone ecosystem. New flight planning. software, additional payloads, as well as obstacle avoidance will provide more tools to capture, process and analyze data For commercial drone applications. Some of the highlights from today’s announcement include Intel Mission Control software, three new payloads, obstacle avoidance, Intel Insight Platform and the world’s first UL 3030 certification for Intel’s Falcon 8+ drone. Read Intel’s press release below for all the details.
For the second year in a row, Intel brought their drones to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This time it was a live drone show instead of a pre-recorded one. The 420 Shooting Star drones were part of ODESZA’s act last Sunday and flew in a synchronized fashion to create ODESZA’s geometric logo in the sky in a spectacular fashion.
Watching the Olympics is always spectacular with amazing and record-breaking performances from many different athletes. This time around though drones also played an important role during the games. As part of the Opening Ceremony two weeks ago, Intel has a record-breaking 1,218 “Shooting Star” drones in the sky simultaneously, earning them a spot in the Guinness World Records. Now, at the end of the Winter Olympics, Intel had another smaller drone show with 300 unmanned aerial vehicles in the air.
Intel’s just set a record with 1,218 drones that flew together and created different patterns in the sky as part of the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The drones take off separately and are being controlled by one single computer. Once in the air they fly in harmony and create spectacular three-dimensional shapes such as a moving snowboarder or the famous interlocking Olympic rings.
During the CES 2018 event in Las Vegas, the Volocopter 2X, an 18-rotor air taxi drone, made its debut flight. Volocopter works closely together with Intel and after the tech giant completed their keynote presentation, the taxi drone to make its short first flight over the stage. Granted it was a very short flight but the first, nonetheless for Volocopter in North America.
Intel has been showing off its skills in flying swarms of drone yet again. We all have seen their drone show at the Bellagio. Now Intel has taken one hundred tiny drones, that flew as a group, in a coordinated fashion over the crowds, without GPS, inside. If that sounds impressive, well, that is because it is.
We have seen Intel’s ‘Shooting Star’ drones in action before during the Super Bowl, now we are seeing them at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
Wildlife biologists often work under harsh conditions in unforgivable environments to observe dangerous animals, but if you think that this would pose the biggest risk to a biologists life, you’d be wrong. The number one cause of death for wildlife biologists are light-aircraft crashes. According to a 2003 study in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, between 1937 and 2000, 91 biologists and other scientists have died in the field and 60 of them were killed in helicopter or plane crashes. Mostly while flying at low altitudes to track wildlife.