Who needs fireworks when you have drones?
Disney World is ditching the fireworks for drones this holiday season.
On Nov. 20, Disney and Intel are launching the Starbright Holidays Drone Show, which they're billing as the world's largest drone LED show.
That's right, instead of carefully-orchestrated fireworks shooting hundreds of feet into the air to create images of a flag, flower or intersecting circles, 300 Intel drones will shine 4 billion different colors in the night sky.
The show, which will be held over a lake at Disney Springs (formerly Disney Downtown), is the culmination of months and months of technology development and experimentation by Intel and a new partnership with Disney that's done some eye-popping imagineering of its own.
Known as The Shooting Star, the all foam and plastic fliers weighs about as much as a volleyball and can stay aloft for up to 20 minutes.
Intel has been testing these LED-equipped show drones since 2015, when it set a world record in Germany, flying and controlling 100 drones and even programming them to configure themselves into the Intel Logo.
Intel took the show on the road, flying the drones all over Europe. That experience, Intel's SVP of New Technology Josh Walden told Mashable, taught Intel a lot about drone choreography. They were doing it wrong. Each of the shows took weeks and weeks to program and they needed a significant number of people on the ground to pilot the drones.
"We went back and designed the platform from the bottom up for light shows," said Walden.
The new platform lets the programming happen offsite and the pilot is able to upload the entire show to all the drones, which are sitting on interface platforms, at once.
Intel's algorithms not only program the drones, but quickly calculates exactly how many will be needed for each show. Starting the performance takes the push of one button.
The quadcopter drones have built-in GPS, which is so precise the programming now lets them fly just 1.5 meters apart (the original Shooting Star drones had to be at least 3 meters apart). The drones have no visual sensors to note if other drones are around them, Walden said.
Drones and people don't always mix, so Disney and Intel are keeping the drones roughly 200 yards away from the audience and don't plan to fly them over anyone's head. The drones are also geo-fenced so none can wander out of the safe zone. Pilots will be on the ground to take control if necessary.
Beyond the holiday-theme and full orchestra accompaniment, Intel couldn't give us any details on the contents of the show, which will run through Jan. 8. However, a teaser posted by Disney does show the drones configured into a towering Christmas tree.
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
