10,000 Drones Controlled By A Single Computer! - Guinness World Records - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 06:03:38 am
content: Give it a few more years and the density will be good enough to fool viewers that they are seeing solid UFOs in the sky.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 06:26:05 am
content: Hmmm; haven't heard about anything like that happening here in the U.S.And we want to go to war with the PRC?

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 02:06:14 pm
content: Impressive. Looks like they gave themselves a 2% margin to make sure they got above 10,000 working drones -- but only needed 0.03%, for a total of 10,197 drones in operation. (I wonder whether they counted how many went up or how many came back down in working order?)

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 08:10:48 pm
content: Also impressive because of the close-order drill here. I think of those drones as 10K pixels in the sky. Just think what could've happened had there been a collision between just two of them; talk about a cascading failure.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 08:22:41 pm
content: For an engineer, the coolest part of these displays is how they get started and end. The drones arrive on big trays which get laid out on the ground in a grid. They rise from the trays, and at the end go back to the exact tray slot they came from, and settle themselves back in. That last part is just beautiful to watch. Every drone lands with pinpoint accuracy and adequate clearance from its neighbours.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 08:23:21 pm
content: Very impressive and extremely risky as well.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 08:25:33 pm
content: Obi-Wan Kenobe told us: With great impressiveness comes great risk.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 08:48:09 pm
content: "controlled by a single computer" sounds like a BS slogan to me - I would expect each drone has its own preprogrammed sequence stored onboard, and all that any control system has to do is download the sequence before the show, and then broadcast a start command and maybe a timecode and ability to send some commands in case of the need to abort.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 09:06:07 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on November 11, 2024, 08:48:09 pmI expect that is broadly true, but if they can make some spare drones fill in for ones that fail during final preparations, that might add some complexity. Clearly, the controlling computer is not sending out the individual actions in real time. The whole array must be working to a heartbeat.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 09:09:12 pm
content: I would expect this many devices to implement some kind of mesh network.The controlling computer can't possibly reliably address every single of these individually. So it probably reaches one of them and then the information propagates to neighbors in a mesh fashion.They probably can each detect the distance from their neighbors with good precision to adjust their position. After that, it's mostly a matter of algorithmically finding the least amount of displacement for each of them to minimize positioning time and avoid any drone crossing the path of another one.

author: Andy Chee
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 09:32:29 pm
content: I guess this is what constitutes as a blooper in the drone world?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2024, 09:41:54 pm
content: 10000 xyz coordinates isn't that much data, centralized control for the formation with multicast is easy. Leave obstacle avoidance upto the local control loops and do some sims and math to prove stability of control if you try to run the swarm into an obstacle, one of the drones runs away or some bird of prey tries to eat one of the drones.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 09:44:04 am
content: Quote from: coppice on November 11, 2024, 08:22:41 pmI'm always surprised when I see drone shows being set up by laying them out manually. This is the first behind-the-scenes I've seen that automates this. I was envisaging seeing vertical stacks packed into a truck, so they could just drive up, open the roof & go. Charging would be integrated into the holders. If you got that right, you could do multiple shows a night

author: flipper
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 09:50:39 am
content: Now imagine if that single computer crashes. They say “single computer” to make it sound impressive, but I’d want some redundancy.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 03:33:43 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 11, 2024, 09:06:07 pmSince they all have GPS/Beidou to position themselves, getting exact time (within 1/60th a second for visually apparent synchronicity) is actually very easy. Almost every GNSS module can send a message on some fraction of GNSS time.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 03:44:46 pm
content: It's interesting to hear engineers here being so certain there is no centralized real-time control. Just do a napkin calculation.16-bit X,Y,Z + 16-bit color + say 192 bits of overhead (e.g. radio protocol preamble, addressing etc) * 10000 drones * 10 FPS = measly 24 Mbit/s bandwidth, easily achievable with 20MHz band over 2.4GHz or anything similar.Or you can put them in groups that use different carrier frequencies and address a few hundred at once so that others just ignore data not belonging to them. The fact it can be all unidirectional makes things much easier.Not saying they use 2.4GHz, probably they got permission for a frequency band not busy from all the spectators sharing their wifi.The devil is in the details, for such show everything has to go right. Fundamental decision whether running a preprogrammed sequence or updating data on real time is irrelevant, both are workable solutions of similar complexity.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 03:52:51 pm
content: If I were designing a system like this I'd have a central "launch" signal which would start the preprogrammed show, but after that I'd have everything run autonomously. The issue with using RF to communicate with 10,000 drones is a mid air collision could easily occur if one drone did not receive the signal to move but all of its buddies did. If they are autonomous then that's never going to a failure mode short of a drone actually having a hardware failure (and that's a risk either way.)

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 04:10:29 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on November 12, 2024, 03:52:51 pmI think you will need some kind of distributed/local/autonomous collision avoidance (direct low-range communication with nearby drones) anyway, I would not trust all 10000 performing pre-loaded sequence in perfect sync without any issues.The drones are surprisingly sparse which isn't so obvious from quick glance of the video.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 04:24:51 pm
content: It's all down to how accurate the GPS-RTK positioning is, after effects of wind etc. are taken into account.If you have good enough realtime position awareness, anti-collision can be programmed into the flight paths for each drone- not trivial but all doable in advance, along with simulations to evaluate spacing and take into account wind & failures.there is no reason to take the risk of using realtime control - the only thing you rely on is the GPS RTK signal, and that could be broadcast from multiple sites on multiple channels for redundancy.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 04:26:57 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on November 12, 2024, 04:24:51 pmThat's my point. It's doable but it's not simple. Well the alternative of centralized real-time isn't simple either, of course.

author: Lango1818
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 05:21:15 pm
content: :-[The Military are already using this tech to swarm their enemy behind the lines with drones and explosive charges. Imagine being in the trenches and suddenly there is a swam of drones attacking you with the intention of blowing you up. SKYNET here we come.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 06:10:13 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on November 12, 2024, 04:24:51 pmThere is a large risk to not having real time control too. Can't predict everything which can go wrong.If the local control loop can prevent collisions with obstacles, barring emergency overrides, what's the problem with centralized control? Worst case, control is lost long enough they do a forced descent as batteries run low (maybe build in human/animal detection for that case too).

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 07:06:24 pm
content: More scenes from the same show:https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BdB26EpV1HE?feature=share

author: globoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2024, 07:21:33 pm
content: That video said they "monitor" the drones in real time so maybe they get pre-loaded with the routine and synced before. Would be interesting to get to look at the authoring software.I did see one drone not completely stick the landing.