Intel Shows off its Drone Tech at the Super Bowl 2017

2017-02-22 | By Maker.io Staff

Just recently one of the greatest sporting events in the world just happened watched by millions of people across the world and as you can imagine it’s a commercial haven for top branded companies. For one company in particular it was also a chance to show off its latest drone technology with a magnificent display of colour and co-ordination.

If you watched the Super Bowl half-time show, then you would have noticed during Lady Gaga’s performance a spectacle of lights in the background as she stood tall on the stadium roof. At a first glance I initially thought this was some CGI magic in the background, but I was wrong. The light show was created using 300 of Intel’s Shooting Star Drones, which weighed only 280 grams. Each drone featured an RGB LED strip, which had the ability to create millions of different colors across the spectrum. What’s more impressive is that these drones all intelligently worked to a movement routine in-sync with each other and only controlled by a single person from the ground.

These drones have also been featured at events prior to the Super Bowl such as at Disney World. Each drone is pre-programmed from the beginning using a number of desktop software programs. Unfortunately, these drones do not talk to each other; they merely carry out their own unique routine oblivious to all the other drones flying around each other. This also means there is no collision detection as Intel states that the Collison detection is all done in the software prior to being programmed.

The Technology

Intel has been tight lipped on what’s inside the Shooting Star drone but they have partnered with a number of companies that specialize in drone technology such as e-volo, Yuneec, Precision hawk and Airware. The technology from these companies combined with Intel’s own hardware has created quite a powerful combination for use in a drone.

Intel Shooting Star Drone

The Shooting Star drone is made from a polystyrene enclosure and is built using a number of snap fit modules. I would imagine the drone is powered using Intel’s own Aero Compute Module board. Intel designed the Aero Module to be a universal platform that could be embedded within any UAV application with direct application support for the Intel RealSense computer vision technology. The Aero Module features an Intel Atom x7-Z8750 quad-core processor with 4GB of DDR3 memory and up to 32GB of eMMC storage. The module runs Linux 4.4.3 Yocto, dual-band WiFi and a number of peripheral interfaces.

Intel Aero Compute Module

At the moment Drones are usually designed from the bottom up with many of its hardware custom designed to suit applications needs including film makers, drone racing, commercial such as delivery’s and industrial such as site planning or farming. The compute module aims to standardize the hardware for every application in mind.

Summary

The Shooting Star drones are visually impressive and I would imagine adding a unique experience to any show. Intel proudly shows off its technology and brand and they have even made it into the Guinness book of records with its displays of 500 drones at a time. It will be interesting to see if they release this to the public and make it open-source.

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