On the stage of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Snake, 3000 drones took off at the Chongqing branch venue, and the night sky suddenly burst with "cyber fireworks", bringing a dazzling fantasy: giant chili peppers jumped out of boiling hot pot, the China Europe freight train crossed the time and space tunnel, camellias, New Year lanterns and other items appeared one after another, using hardcore technology to interpret Chinese romance. The "cyber fireworks" that light up the night sky are a new form of performance that combines technology and art, using drone formations as carriers. And these 'aerial actors' come from Guangdong Shenzhen Desert Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. At a low altitude of only 50 centimeters from the stage, the drone formation hovered neatly, blending seamlessly with the stage. The staff introduced that through satellite navigation positioning, RTK technology (a satellite positioning measurement method), etc., the company's drone fleet has millimeter level positioning capability. A few minutes in the sky, a few years in the audience. It is not an easy task to have thousands of drones take off simultaneously, hover steadily in mid air, and arrange in an orderly manner. The first performance was in 2016, when 80 drones were laid flat in the air, switching to display different patterns and texts Qin Haiqun, Deputy General Manager of Desert Intelligence Control Technology Co., Ltd., recalled that at that time, the company was not yet established and the drone fleet performance industry was not yet mature. The success of this performance has shown the team the potential of this emerging market. From 80, 3000, to over 10000; Over the past few years, the evolution of drone performance has been clearly visible on the aerial stage, from flat flashing lights and graphic switching to three-dimensional modeling and dynamic silky changes. Behind this, the technical team has been solving difficult problems all the way. In 2020, during a performance in Zhuhai, 3051 drones filled the stadium, requiring more than 100 people to manually place and align them one by one before takeoff. "It's like planting rice seedlings, time-consuming and laborious," Qin Haiqun said. The high labor cost is unsustainable, and this problem must also be solved when entering overseas markets. The "box up and box down" technology that emerged from this saves time, money, and effort: each box carries 12 drones, which only need to be opened and laid on site. During performances, it can achieve one click takeoff and automatic return to its original position after completion. In September 2024, Desert Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. held a drone performance in Shenzhen Bay, setting two Guinness World Records for "the most drones simultaneously launched by a single computer" and "the most aerial patterns composed of drones" with 10197 drones. Compared to the performance in Zhuhai a few years ago, the number of drones has increased by more than three times, but the manpower for setting up the venue has been reduced by half, and the required venue area has also been significantly reduced. In addition, the takeoff of the fleet requires a flat and uniform terrain, and the height difference may affect the performance effect and even cause collisions, so it is necessary to adjust the data of each drone separately. The technical team has innovated an absolute altitude positioning scheme, overcoming terrain constraints. The route planning algorithm is also constantly iterating, and the path calculation time that originally required half an hour has been compressed to 3 minutes, increasing efficiency by 10 times. Every drone is equivalent to an actor. Solid technical support opens up greater imaginative space for us Liu Hanbin, Chairman of Desert Intelligence Control Technology Co., Ltd., said that with the increasingly solid technological foundation, more imaginative ideas have been realized through ups and downs. At a performance in Zhuhai, Guangdong, "major national heavy objects" such as Tiangong-1, Beidou satellite system, and China's space station stood tall in the night sky, reflecting the dream of space exploration; In Gubei Water Town, Beijing, drones slowly take off with Kongming lanterns, carrying people's beautiful visions into the sky and interweaving with ground lights to create a dreamlike picture... Nowadays, the company has been continuously invited to domestic and international markets, and its products are exported to more than 50 countries and regions, with a rapid increase in overseas orders. In recent years, China's drone fleet performance has developed rapidly, and the "cyber fireworks" have gone abroad, stunning the world. We constantly explore and extract new cultural symbols and integrate them into design, seeking a balance between technology and art Peng Ling, the head of the company's art and design department, introduced that drone performances should adhere to the principle of "content is king" and allow artistic creation to "fly" towards a new dimension of technological aesthetics. Nowadays, the artistic expression of drone performances has surpassed simple visual shock. The industry is actively exploring cross-border interactions with music, dance, drama, and other genres, using diverse and integrated performance forms to create an immersive experience. Technology meets culture, innovation embraces tradition. The drones under the night sky will eventually return, and the cultural symbols that freeze in the sky will become a shared beautiful memory for the audience. In the future, we hope to invite artists from all over the world to collaborate and continuously enrich the cultural connotations of our works In Liu Hanbin's vision, drone swarms will further break the boundaries of traditional stages and be applied in more fields such as intelligent lighting and entertainment activities, flying towards a broader horizon. (New Society)