China's Bungled Drone Display Breaks World Record (bbc.com) 67
Chinese company EHang has broken the Guinness World Record for the most drones flown simultaneously, despite them failing to coordinate for a light show. The company programmed a fleet of 1,374 drones to fly in set patterns, "but failed to spell out the date and the record-setting number of drones," reports the BBC. From the report: The South China Morning Post called the event an "epic fail." The record was previously held by U.S. technology company Intel, which flew 1,218 aircraft at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games in February. Intel's show was pre-recorded before being aired during the opening ceremony, due to "possible freezing weather and strong winds." According to the South China Morning Post, EHang was paid 10.5 million yuan ($1.65 million) for the Labor Day performance in the north-western city of Xi'an. You can watch a video of the drone display here.
Reporting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
No more travelling for them...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
"The South China Morning Post called the event an "epic fail."" And promptly had their social scores plummeting into the negatives....?
Well, SCMP is in Hong Kong so it's a little different because...
1) What happens or is said in Hong Kong (mostly) stays in Hong Kong.
2) Hong Kong still has some autonomy and I haven't yet read about the social scores idea being used there - yet.
3) SCMP is in English, so its target audience is actually mostly foreigners or locals with really good English skills.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd wait till all those F35 contracts have been signed.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd imagine that one person with a signal jammer could take down a bunch of these drones at once if they needed to. If you did that suddenly while they were changing formation, they would probably get confused and crash into each other.
Yes and no. They're called ... (Score:4, Informative)
The word "drone" is used for two very different things.
Actual drones fly autonomously, and are normally fixed wing airplanes. Examples include the MQ-1B Predator, RQ-7B Shadow, and MQ-9 Reaper.
What this article calls "drones" are RC quadcopters. As the article mentioned, they were flown from by the ground, by radio, just like the RC planes that starting gaining popularity 80 years ago. Quadcopters are fun toys. Because of some fundamental physics, quadcopters get dramatically less efficient as they get larger. The concept works quite well for a toy three inches across. Efficiency drops as you approach the larger popular size, which is 250mm (10 inches) across. Once you get up to about a meter across you're hitting the practical limit. You CAN build one bigger, but it's performance and especially flight time completely sucks compared to a plane or helicopter of similar size. You're never going to put thousands of pounds of military equipment and weapons systems on a quadcopter; it just doesn't make sense.
Can a military use small, unmanned aircraft effectively? Absolutely, and that's been US military doctrine for most of the time since cruise missiles were developed in the 1970s, and especially since the Tomahawk in 1983. Several proposed new aircraft have been cancelled in favor of missiles, which can carry out the same mission at lower cost, in dollars and lives. The venerable B-52 can quickly carry TWENTY AGM-86 cruise missiles to within 1500 miles of the targets, anywhere in the world, and those missiles then autonomously fly the last 1,500 miles to their targets.
There's really little military need for small, low-performance aircraft to fly around in patterns. Generally, you want to get to the target and destroy it quickly. That's what missiles do. Other aircraft can loiter maintaining situational awareness, watching, then call the missile strikes. There's little need for the recon aircraft to also be the one to strike the target.
In some hostile airspace, against moving targets or targets you can't get good satellite views of, you sometimes want to look, then fire a weapon. For that you want fast, stealthy aircraft which carry enough armament to destroy the target in one strike. A large group of slow, non-stealthy toys, which carry no more than a hand grenade, isn't particularly useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Because of some fundamental physics, quadcopters get dramatically less efficient as they get larger.
Humor me. Why.
Re: (Score:3)
To put it simply and quickly:
The thrust developed by a prop at a given RPM is proportional to its diameter to the 2/3 power, multiplied by its pitch. In other words, the cube root of the diameter squared. As an easy example let's use a prop of diameter 1, pitch 1, and a prop of diameter 10, pitch 10.
1 squared is 1, and the cube root is 1, pitch is 1, so the thrust is 1 unit.
10 squared is 100, the cube root is 4.6, pitch is 10.
So a prop 10 times as big produces 46 times the power.
A quadcopter "10 tim
The New Fireworks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are co-ordinated drone displays the 'new fireworks'? Fireworks are cool, but they're not 100% predictable, and they're noisy/smokey etc. I wonder though as this technology develops, and as 'heavy' drones become cheaper and more plentiful, if we'll see more of these sorts of displays for big annual events around the world?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that depends where you live - where I live there are pretty strict laws about (permanent) illuminated structures - I realise these will drop through that particular loophole for a while, but I doubt it would be for long.
Re: (Score:2)
and they're noisy/smokey etc
Both of which is a significant portion of the charm. Each of which have been used to create shows in their own right (fireworks that are used just for synchronised sounds, and fireworks which give off different coloured smoke for use in the daytime).
I know I'd much rather listen to noisy fireworks than 1218 drones. I know I'd much rather listen to noisy fireworks than 1218 drones. Sentence used twice for the two different definitions of "drone".
China's? (Score:3)
Why does the headline attribute this to "China"? It's a private company.
Re: (Score:2)
And why do they say "but failed to spell out the date and the record-setting number of drones" when the link shows otherwise:
https://youtu.be/YQK6_2Brnqk?t... [youtu.be]
Re:China's? (Score:4, Insightful)
I noticed that too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But even if they bungled up somewhere, the end result still looks pretty cool. The main emphasis shouldn't be on 'bungled'. Too much propagandishness to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Private companies in China are not the same as private companies elsewhere. You might as well use quotes when stating private.
We still have the record for most people / manual (Score:2)
Last summer our "drone" (quadcopter) group in Dallas set the record for the most flown individually, as opposed to Intel's system in which a computer flew them all as a group. We have a hundred people standing in a field, all flying our toys simultaneously.
I wish the marketers hadn't labeled RC quadcopters "drones" because it creates confusion. An actual drone flies autonomously. Most drones are fixed-wing aircraft, airplanes. That includes the MQ-1B Predator, RQ-7B Shadow, MQ-9 Reaper, etc. What this artic
Re: (Score:1)
So, you're saying that in 1938, people were flying radio-controlled model aircraft? I doubt it. There were no transistors until much later, so I don't think that the aircraft would be powerful enough to lift the HUGE BATTERIES, TRANSFORMERS, and VACUUM TUBES unless it was a FULL-SIZE aircraft.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually there were "hobbiest" RC model aircraft in the 1930's.
The 1950's had small tube based RC units.
http://www.stormthecastle.com/... [stormthecastle.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The earliest examples of electronically guided model aircraft were hydrogen-filled model airships of the late 19th century. They were flown as a music hall act around theater auditoriums using a basic form of spark-emitted radio signal [wikipedia.org].
You were saying...?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, and regarding the tubes and batteries business, please see here [wikipedia.org].
Partial. Decision making, such as see and avoid (Score:2)
Because the Bebop 2 now includes a GPS module, it is able follow step-by-step instructions given by the pilot, such as "fly 50 feet, turn left, then fly 30 feet". In US military terms, that's partial autonomy.
Full autonomous would include decision-making ability. A fully autonomous system can recognize it is on a collision course with another aircraft, and take appropriate action.
Partial or semi-autonomous is cool, it's fun - and you have to be standing there watching it, controller in hand, or it'll likely
A paper airplane is a drone? A birthday balloon? (Score:2)
So by your definition a paper airplane and a party balloon are drones?
In my opinion, any useful definition of "drone" needs to distinguish between a paper airplane vs X-47B, Triton, BAMS, etc.
The FAA doesn't use the term drone, so there is no definition from them. The use Unmanned Aerial System and "autonomous". Under the the first draft of the recent UAS regulations, a paper airplane was a UAS and required a license. The draft was slightly improved before it went into effect.
Re: (Score:2)
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There you go.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Paper airplanes are drones because the dihedral is what keeps it aloft and balanced.. The operator just provides directional and power input.
Re: (Score:2)
An actual drone flies autonomously.
You keep saying that but it's not true. From wikipedia:
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone...
and,
The term drone, more widely used by the public, was coined in reference to the early remotely-flown target aircraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The drones did fine. (Score:2)
The drones did exactly as told. It's just a case of half the display being mojibake due to an iOS update two hours before the show.
weaponized drone swarms (Score:1)
EHang rose to prominence a couple years ago at CES (Score:2)
Remember their big splashy people carrying Octo-copter?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g... [forbes.com]
Do you still want to ride in one of these?