many of you are probably quite familiar
with this image I draw on the fly
machines equipped with a camera that you
can easily fly with your smartphone to
take stunning pictures from the sky and
the cool part about that is that you can
buy that in the store next door for me
however drones are a little bit
different I started my journey with
drones back in 2008 when I was doing my
bachelor studies at ETH and I was
looking for a bachelor thesis there I
found a project offered by professor of
philodendron by Angelus Ehrlich the
dread synchronizing the motion of a
quadrocopter to music okay that was an
easy pick and that’s where it all
started and that’s where we add
so that was back in 2008 a single
machine dancing together with music but
drone technology is going beyond that in
fact that like humans do in with
individual vehicle capabilities can be
extended if drones cooperate together
and this can lead to completely
unexpected use new uses for example
aerial construction a couple of years
back we build a tower using for flying
machines working together to carry foam
bricks placing them down to assemble a
six metre tall tower after that we
decided to push a road construction a
little bit further and we assemble a
rope bridge having multiple multiple
machine cooperating together like in
this in this part here what I find
interesting about these examples is that
by having multiple drones and yes you
can work on the bridge by having
multiple drones cooperating together you
can actually do stuff that the single
drone could not do alone and another
interesting aspect of that is that when
you look at this drone working together
in synchrony you kind of start losing
the perception of them as individual
vehicle but you start seeing them as the
entities as a swarm you can add more
vehicle to this warm and then you can
get to this very powerful image as
synthetic swarm so I read construction
is still a product of research and is
not yet ready for commercial application
the last example of ever presents an
emergent use case the use of drones in
live entertainment there have been many
example over the past years there have
been blimps at the muse concert there
have been light displays in the sky by
spaetzle Intel and Disney there have
been performances at America’s Got
Talent
British Got Talent and there are drones
the flying lap so it’s that which are
actually done by the company work for
Verity Studios that are currently
featured on Broadway in a Cirque du
Soleil show
but how do you do that how do you have
multiple drones flying together in
synchrony maybe synchronized to music in
very tight formation without colliding
with each other clearly we cannot just
get to the store by our drone take our
tablet and try to do that that would be
impossible for pilots let’s say you have
50 of them in the sky how can you even
track your own drone that would not work
also if you want to fly very tight
formation like circles or rather spiral
something where you have to be very
close to the other drones that would be
almost impossible to kind of not crash
into each other
to do that you need a system that allows
for autonomous operation when the drones
act autonomously you need what we can
call a synthetic swarm system a
synthetic swarm system consists of four
components usually you have the self
piloted drones you have a positioning
system you have communication
infrastructure and you have a control
station you need the drones to be
autonomous you need the drones to be
able to follow given instruction for
example a specific flight plan and you
need them to be smart enough to react in
case of emergencies if something is
wrong to do that they need to know their
location in space and this information
is often provided by a positioning
system which outside can be GPS you need
in a way to communicate with them you
need some interface to tell the
synthetic swarm to actually start or
stop its performance once you have the
tag once you’re actually able to follow
some instructions you have to come up
with ways of creating these instructions
of creating these flight plans because
how do you are you design drone
choreographies you know what what’s
interesting what is not interesting and
this brings me back to ETH to my journey
with drones after having a single
vehicle dancing to music we wanted more
we wanted more vehicle dancing to music
and for that we needed two things mainly
we needed an easy way to describe drone
choreographies and we
a way to make sure that when they move
they don’t collide with each other so we
approach that and what we came up with
it’s a way to describe choreography as a
concatenation of multiple motion
elements for example you can tell two
sand runs once you start you do a circle
here all together then you go you
transition into a spiral here and then
you do a couple of flips just for fun
but once you have these elements you
still have a way to let’s say when
you’re going from the circle to the
spirals a you don’t have to collide with
each other so you need algorithms that
allow you to generate this flight path
while ensuring that the drones are
always at a safe distance away from each
other and with that we were able to kind
of have a tool choreographies for
multiple flying vehicles where you could
right now we can actually create
performances with dozen or even hundreds
of vehicle building up on these tools
but drones in live entertainment are not
only nice light in the sky or dancing
characters there is something that it’s
also very interesting or which at least
I found find very interesting which is
the interaction between a synthetic wall
is warm and people so we tried that a
couple of times back together with
Sergio Solano Shore movie what we have
here we have a synthetic swarm
interacting with an actor and you can
see that this creates a very fascinating
effect and allow for a very powerful
narrative and this is what we would like
to see on stage this very intimate
effect of people and drawn sharing the
same space however if you share the same
sprays just if you share the same space
with 10 20 30 drones there is some risk
associated with that them so you need to
consider safety with when you’re when
people are sharing the same space with
drones for example back in that was a
couple of years ago we I was involved
with the fly machine arena team in
preparing a presentation at tEDGlobal
featuring drones but as you can see here
in the picture we have a fly machines
here we have audience but there isn’t at
separating the two in fact because of
that we were not able to perform this
talk live on the main stage but we had
to be in a separate room the reason for
that is that the system was meant for
research in robotics and control and not
to be used in a live show environment
indeed if you design a system for live
shows you safety as to drive every
design decision and I would argue that
safety must we actually be considered
from the very beginning as a main
criterion for designing your system so
for example to have a system which is
safe or more safe you can have a system
which is fully redundant
system that can tolerate the failure of
any one of its component for example
part of its positioning system can fail
or a single motor on the drone can fail
and the drone should not crash it should
be able to at least perform a controlled
descent an alternative approach is to
have very small drones which are
intrigued intrinsically safe very
lightweight with propeller protective
propellers this would allow to minimize
the consequences of a potential crash we
did our own work we created a synthetic
storm system and we were finally able to
perform on the test stage this one this
time the main stage and with this we
were able to create this very intimate
effect that we were looking for where
people and drones share the same space
safely in fact right now there are
couple of synthetic swarm system out
there and they’re slowly building a
track record for example you can go to
one a business park in Orlando right now
and you can see hundreds of them
performing in the night sky you can go
out to new york and you can see our
drones and broadway which in fact so far
have reached about 20 40 shows without a
single incident during technology should
knock on booth at this point but drone
technology is progressing faster and the
use of drones in live entertainment is a
growing business and is the first
example of cooperating drones finding
their way into commercial applications i
think that many more will combine at
next year’s for now i’m happy to be part
of a fantastic team and i’m happy to
continue this journey with them and i’m
looking forward to see what the future
also upon us thank you [Applause]