The Industrial Revolution of the SKY

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Intel’s just set a record with 1,218 drones that flew together and created different patterns in the sky as part of the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The drones take off separately and are being controlled by one single computer. In the air they flew in harmony and created spectacular three-dimensional shapes such as a moving snowboarder or the Olympic rings.

 

The topic I'm going to talk about is cluster drones.

 

Basic principle of drone is lift force by wings. The lift force will float in the air according to the Newton's 3rd Law. The drones are unmanned aircrafts, so they are controlled by Bluetooth, cellular or satellite systems. Because of this, the ability of the pilot is very important. But compared to humans, pre-coded program is more correct. we could immediately access the drones without having to waste any time of driving to the controller. And due to battery limitations, it is impossible to create a large drones to play a large part. The small size has some disadvantages, and nature has found a number of ways to supply for these disadvantages. The basic idea is making to form large groups like animals.

 

And this is hard because now you have to think about networks of drones. And within each drones, you have to think about the interplay of sensing, communication, computation -- and this network then becomes quite difficult to control and manage. So drone algorithms have organizing principles from nature. Idea is that drones need to be aware of their neighbors. They need to be able to sense and communicate with their neighbors.

 

You have drones -- one of the drones has actually been hijacked by a human operator, literally. But because the drones interact with each other, they sense their neighbors, they move together. And there's a single drone able to lead this network of followers. So again, All the drones can't know where they're supposed to go. It's because they're just reacting to the positions of their neighbors.

 

So why work with groups? Drones can be used in many ways because they are fast, economic, and dangerous to human beings.

 

The first one has to do with agriculture, which is probably the biggest problem that we're facing worldwide. As you well know, one in every seven persons in this earth is unbalanced nutrition.

 

There is also Amazon Prime Air. These delivery systems enable delivery in minutes. And drones are used by US police drones and climate observations in this moment.

 

Korea is an Internet powerful nation, but development of drone is difficult due to the system. Finally, I would like to inform you that drones is the potentially large market and a very important industry in the country.

 

As a future computing physicist, the drones are attractive. So I introduced the drones to you. I would like you to know that the drones can be research topics for mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and engineers alike. Now, We can draw a fine picture of future with drones.