3 ms·

I should have added to the title that this is from 2018. Apparently it's a swarm of 2018 drones. Does anybody know of a blog post where this is explained? In p

I should have added to the title that this is from 2018. Apparently it's a swarm of 2018 drones. Does anybody know of a blog post where this is explained? In particular, choreographing the movements of the swarm looks terrifyingly hard.

jrockway 7y ago
I think you can simulate this all in advance and have each drone executing a pre-arranged gcode-like program. I'm guessing the complexity of choreography is similar to something like autorouting a circuit board. Other comments mention that using GPS for relative positioning is fine. The largest source of error in GPS is ionospheric delays, which will affect all these drones equally, so I can believe that. Meanwhile, the flight computer handles figuring out how much power each motor needs to move or maintain its position. What if there is high wind on the day that you want to do this? Either a single drone can remain stationary in that amount of wind, or it can't; if it can't, then you cancel the performance because there is no computer program you can write to suddenly give the drone more control authority. I doubt there is any additional complexity here; I doubt the drones are looking out for other drones and coordinating with each other. They just go to a set position at a set time at a set speed. Any complexity lies in the positioning; whether GPS + barometric altimeter + IMS (gyro/accelerometer) is enough to get the desired accuracy. It probably is.
- bprater 7y ago
  Differential GPS is needed to achieve this accuracy. At some point in the future, vision systems + coded lighting may suffice, but for now, more elaborate tech is needed to keep these machines in tight formation.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I don't think differential GPS does anything here. It corrects for large-scale ionospheric delay error, which is going to be exactly the same for every drone at this scale. And they have WAAS receivers anyway, which provides better accuracy than differential GPS. (Maybe you mean RTK, which could help achieve centimeter accuracy.)

jrockway 7y ago

I think you can simulate this all in advance and have each drone executing a pre-arranged gcode-like program. I'm guessing the complexity of choreography is similar to something like autorouting a circuit board. Other comments mention that using GPS for relative positioning is fine. The largest source of error in GPS is ionospheric delays, which will affect all these drones equally, so I can believe that. Meanwhile, the flight computer handles figuring out how much power each motor needs to move or maintain its position. What if there is high wind on the day that you want to do this? Either a single drone can remain stationary in that amount of wind, or it can't; if it can't, then you cancel the performance because there is no computer program you can write to suddenly give the drone more control authority. I doubt there is any additional complexity here; I doubt the drones are looking out for other drones and coordinating with each other. They just go to a set position at a set time at a set speed. Any complexity lies in the positioning; whether GPS + barometric altimeter + IMS (gyro/accelerometer) is enough to get the desired accuracy. It probably is.

bprater 7y ago
Differential GPS is needed to achieve this accuracy. At some point in the future, vision systems + coded lighting may suffice, but for now, more elaborate tech is needed to keep these machines in tight formation.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I don't think differential GPS does anything here. It corrects for large-scale ionospheric delay error, which is going to be exactly the same for every drone at this scale. And they have WAAS receivers anyway, which provides better accuracy than differential GPS. (Maybe you mean RTK, which could help achieve centimeter accuracy.)