AERIAL SPECTACULARS
Ottilie Culloty
Mat Lawrence
the-art tools to create eye-catching and complex performances.
Drone technology company Celestial works on numerous major events including the London’ s New Year’ s Eve celebrations. Its head of sales and marketing Ottilie Culloty says the delivery of such spectacular displays is driven by precision technology, with the LED lights enabling almost endless combinations of colours:“ We’ ve got centimetre-level accuracy to ensure the drones’ positions in airspace. This is enabled by global navigation satellite systems, which continuously correct each drone’ s position in real time.”
She says hardware improvements have transformed the scale and ambition of drone shows in recent years:“ We’ re able to fly longer and quicker due to advances in battery life and energy efficiency; it also allows us to have much more ambitious and high-speed choreography in shows.”
At AeroAVA, Rees says cutting-edge technology is being used to expand the reach, and audience, of the shows:“ We have a phone app that enables audiences in the wider community can hear the show. They might be able to see it two or three kilometres away but not hear it, so they download the app and get the audio on their phones.”
These new technologies and innovative approaches are the driving force behind the rise of aerial spectacles enabling eyecatching and complex performances but rather than replacing fireworks events and suppliers are looking to combine the best of both.
From its base in Daventry, DroneSwarm has worked on a wide range of events from live shows such as Classic Ibiza at Burghley House to Queen Elizabeth’ s Platinum Jubilee and St. Patrick’ s Day celebrations.
Its director Mat Lawrence says technology enabling the combination of pyrotechnics and drones, known as pyro drones, is producing dramatic results:“ This innovation creates a unique show that combines coordinated drone movements with synchronised fireworks in a single display.”
A safe flight
In Liuyang, China, this year, every aerial spectacular organiser’ s worst nightmare
Team AeroAVA came true. The city staged what was meant to be an eye-catching drone display, but a malfunction turned it into something closer to an apocalyptic scene than a celebration.
Huge fires engulfed Liuyang’ s Sky Theatre, the location of the show, with reports describing people using umbrellas to shield themselves from falling debris while others ran for safety. With footage of the incident having been shared widely on social media, many are asking whether it could happen again, and whether drone shows are truly safe.
Cuttoly explains how Celestial ensures that its shows are safe, and reveals the technology involved:“ We have automated anti-collision algorithms, which is specialised software that automatically calculates the flight path of each of the drones. It ' s essential that they maintain a safe distance from each other and from the geofence that we have in place.
“ High-safety drones now feature multiple independent navigation sensors and estimators to ensure that the position accuracy is as it should be, and that there’ s a fail-safe in case it’ s not.”
Technology is only playing a part in keeping aerial displays safe in the UK,
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