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Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou
- _joel 5y agoAny coincidence of the recent drone pen-test suite? I'd hope not!
- winrid 5y agoThese drones are used for light shows. I'm guessing they tried to run the show too long. It looks like they all start attempting to land before their batteries run out, around the same time...
- anotheryou 5y agoAlternatively a wrong ground height set. They do move at different speeds between their way points. The one at 0:25 is seriously out of juice or didn't expect the ground where it is. edit: looks like they really just run out of juice: https://twitter.com/pitdesi/status/1445119043199913990 https://twitter.com/pitdesi/status/1445119043199913990
- chrismorgan 5y ago> It looks like they all start attempting to land before their batteries run out, around the same time... That doesn’t immediately sound very plausible to me (as a layman who’s never dealt with drones but has dealt with battery-powered devices): I can’t imagine auto-power-down being based on flight time: surely it would be driven by battery voltage measurements, since batteries vary somewhat to begin with and vary a lot more as they age; and I then wouldn’t expect such homogeneity of battery lives that they would all drop out of the sky in such a short range of time. You could say that their not all behaving in the same way at the same time supports the idea of low-battery emergency landing, but I think that could be adequately explained by network congestion effects too, which could line up with the claim of an attack if such an attack were some sort of frequency jamming or network saturation thing (I don’t know what wireless systems such drones use). (The second video, “another view”, is much more interesting than the first, showing the constellation going from full strength to about two dozen left 30 seconds later, with another dozen subsequently failing very close to simultaneously in the last second of the video—I wish the video had gone for even two seconds more.)
- michaelt 5y ago> I then wouldn’t expect such homogeneity of battery lives that they would all drop out of the sky in such a short range of time. Well, they have all been doing a synchronised routine. Presumably they were purchased as a batch, and operated together. And if these were mini-drones that only had a 10 minute battery life to begin with? I could believe they'd all run flat within 60 seconds of one another.
- chrismorgan 5y agoThey’re not small drones—see the footage as they reach the ground. The flat battery hypothesis also feels unlikely because it’s too obvious a failure mode. On the other hand, I suppose it’d be possible to have them send the drones up, then get told to delay by a few minutes, and so exceed the planned flight time. But the drones aren’t that high up (much less than 30 seconds of controlled descent), so that doesn’t feel so likely.
- IshKebab 5y ago> surely it would be driven by battery voltage measurements No, it's driven by a battery management system that measures battery voltage, temperature and input/output current in order to get a more accurate estimate.
- chrismorgan 5y agoYeah, I didn’t mean to convey that battery voltage measurements would be the only factor, but I didn’t end up actually expressing that. Thanks for the clarification. Certainly the concept still applies: it’s driven by physical factors, not just time.
- IshKebab 5y agoOh sorry I totally misread your comment; thought you said the opposite!
- bigiain 5y agoI can just imagine some guy telling his boss "I know how to make the show better, if we replace all our 2,500mAHr batteries with these 10,000mAHr ones I've found, we'll get 4 times the flying time! We could fly for 40mins instead of only 10mins!" Then all the drones drop out of the sky after 2 minutes because the "10,000mAHr" cells only store about 500mAHr: http://danyk.cz/test18650_en.html http://danyk.cz/test18650_en.html
- jsjohnst 5y agoYep, I agree, seems like battery failure. They do a controlled descent for most of the altitude, and then drop out of the sky and bounce off the ground/cars/trees (better seen in other videos). I’ve never done this large a coordinated display before, but have ten years UAV flying experience (quads, hexes, octo, and double stacked octo) and have done smaller scale test flights with a dozen choreographed drones.
- neither_color 5y agoIt's hard to tell from the video but arent they supposed to fail gracefully in a controlled descent and not drop like rocks?
- cirrus3 5y agoThese don't look super graceful, but also not like rocks.
- bjtitus 5y agoIt seems like most are doing that but some are dropping rapidly, although not in a freefall.
- breckenedge 5y agoAutorotation? Sorry I don’t know enough about drone aerodynamics, but it’s something seen in helicopters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoNot nearly enough energy in the rotor system of that kind of drone to manage an autorotation landing; and they lack a freewheeling system in any case.
- schiffern 5y agoNot sure about these drones, but on my toy drone I can absolutely cut the power and let the wind autorotate the rotors while it falls toward the ground. No need for a freewheel, since the unpowered electric motors spin freely (which isn't necessarily true for a helicopter's engine). There's no collective so you can't "flare" for landing like a helicopter, but during autorotation the terminal velocity is still much lower than if the blades were fixed. The drones in this video fall a lot slower though. This looks like controlled descent, not autorotation.
- hprotagonist 5y agoShades of The Diamond Age.
- propwash 5y agoNot sure why it happened, the company claims that it was sabotaged by a competitor. If you want to read some more about how they work and how they're priced, I wrote about it here - https://propwash.nihalmohan.com/issues/are-drone-light-shows-the-future-of-fireworks-propwash-8-698614 https://propwash.nihalmohan.com/issues/are-drone-light-shows...
- yellow_lead 5y agoThat might be a nice strategy to save face
- fnord77 5y agolove the dead-cat bounce near the end of the video
- joshxyz 5y agoThis is hilariously utopian and dystopian as hell lol
- oefrha 5y agoFor context, this was captured during a holiday drone light show. Apparently some people are letting their imaginations run wild from the confusing clip.
- che_shirecat 5y agothis is cyberpunk as hell, I love it. especially the second video. "drones in rain"
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoLight and air pollution mean you can't see stars any more? Don't worry, our drones now simulate the constellations!
- cycomanic 5y agoMaybe they were using facebook.com for communication?
- dredmorbius 5y agohttps://nitter.kavin.rocks/pitdesi/status/1445118812659933187 https://nitter.kavin.rocks/pitdesi/status/144511881265993318...
- sandworm101 5y agoThese massed drone formations, what frequencies are they using? Are these just consumer drones or are they set to a regulated part of the spectrum? These massed formations are very noisy. If they are using consumer frequencies I imagine anyone in a nearby penthouse might want to jam them.
- fspeech 5y agoThe performance was near a military installation. They probably don't have a licensing scheme in place yet for commercial drone shows.
- jcun4128 5y agoCan't get holograms, let's use drones ha, pretty cool the orchestrating algorithm though however it works
- leptoniscool 5y agoFree microchips from the sky
- narrator 5y agoFor those who like drone dystopia nightmare fuel, this video made me think of this disturbing modern weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu :/
- resist_futility 5y agoSci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” | DUST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
- jl6 5y agoWhat defence could, say, a traditional military base, mount against a swarm of, say, 1000 of these?
- RalfWausE 5y agoI would think "old school" air burst flak could be enough... you only need a thick enough cloud of shrapnel flying around.
- fho 5y agoI am neither American nor a gun nerd, but from what I "overheard" on the internet a single Phalanx system should be able to take out drone swarms at incredible rates?
- sbierwagen 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 >>The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine. >>Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a target.[14] >So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo into the turret. That would make it vulnerable to a saturation attack. You could imagine firing fewer rounds per salvo, but that only slightly mitigates it. Against drone swarms you kinda want directed energy weapons, either microwave or laser. Which don't exist, currently. Also note that Phalanx is radar based, leaving it open to the usual suite of radar jamming/ECW/antiradiation attacks. You can tip the odds back in your favor by emplacing more Phalanx systems, but at ten million bucks each, that limits you to stuff like defending small-size/high-value targets like the White House, rather than numerous and sprawling US military bases.
- krisoft 5y agoHow are the drones usually navigate in these light swarm displays? Is it just GPS or do you need some local nav signal for the accuracy maybe?
- mixxit 5y ago```In the novel The Diamond Age, author Neal Stephenson posits a future in which the world is divided into competing nation-tribes, or phyles. The most powerful of these phyles have extensive nanotechnology capabilities, and use nanotech in various ways to gain an edge over their competitors and neighbors. Most notably, they create various sorts of airborne nanotech robots -- known as mites -- to infiltrate one another's territory and perform espionage or sabotage. Naturally, the other phyles retaliate with antibody mites, which hunt out and disable the invading mites, turning them into inert black dust, or toner. And so it goes. The phyles' populaces themselves rarely see this conflict in their own airspace. Rather, it plays itself out in the Leased Territories and no-man's-lands between phyle enclaves. The thetes (classless members of no phyle, who live in these no-man's-lands), on the other hand, intermittently find their air full of clashing mites, flashing lidar, and the resulting microscopic debris. ```
- mysterious_hat 5y agoCame here for this comment. Thought the exact same thing as soon as I saw this.
- saargrin 5y agoi think diamond age is going to become a reality ,as might most of his other imagined societies ...
- MR4D 5y agoIn some ways, Cryptonomicon already has become reality. We have bitcoin used as national currency in Central America, and things like stable coins (probably the closest real world analogue to the gold backed crypto in the book). I think this is one of the reasons he has such a loyal following - he gets current tech trends and knows how to extrapolate it into the future very well.
- virtualritz 5y ago> Most notably, they create various sorts of airborne nanotech robots -- known as mites -- to infiltrate one another's territory and perform espionage or sabotage I suggest Stanisław Lem’s “Weapon systems of the 21st century.”
- jonplackett 5y agoAt least they’re coming down somewhat gracefully. ‘Raining’ makes it sound a lot worse!
- londons_explore 5y agoI'd be very interested to know how many of these drones the company got back... It really says something about the culture of a group of people if they return someone else's property that ends up in their hands or not.
- yorwba 5y agoAccording to this article https://m.mydrivers.com/newsview/787157.html https://m.mydrivers.com/newsview/787157.html , 8 drones crashed shortly after the show started (initial investigation pointing to mechanical failure) and the operators initiated emergency descent for the remaining drones afterwards.
- poulpy123 5y agoIt's raining drones, hallelujah !
- didntknowya 5y agolooks expensive
- nirui 5y agoYeah, as if everything come out of China is wanting to kill you. From robotic space arms to toy drones. It's kind weird to have that kind of thoughts here, really. That been said, the actual reason for cities to use these drones is surprisingly simple: China banned firework show few years ago for environmental reasons, so cities use drones as alternative to celebrate October 1 which is China's national day and the longest holidays (the Golden Holidays). See? Just that simple. Also, using drones is a smarter choice: Not only it's eco-friendlier, but also cheap, fixable and safer compare to fireworks. You can even put ads in the sky to cover part of the cost after the show is over, it just make more sense. In this very case, I think the drones are doing fail-safe landing maneuvers, probably due to lost of control signal. Reportedly the drone company has already called the police on the suspicion of sabotage.
- yorwba 5y agoReportedly, a company representative has denied the sabotage claims as baseless: https://3g.163.com/news/article/GLB7UNBI0001899O.html https://3g.163.com/news/article/GLB7UNBI0001899O.html
- nirui 5y agoHuh. Thanks for the update. My information was still in the "媒体报道显示，有高新区万达广场工作人员称，已报警处理，疑似同行恶意竞争干扰所致" time frame.