Wednesday, October 06, 2021
Light Show Goes Wrong When Drones Start Plummeting Out of the Sky
futurism.com: In an eerie bit of imagery, drones literally started raining from the sky in Zhengzhou, a city of 10 million people in the Chinese province of Henan.
Videos shared on social media show a constellation of drones starting to quickly lose altitude before clattering down on the ground. Onlookers can be seen jumping out of the way to avoid getting struck by the small drones.
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I actually think the idea of a light show using a drone is incredibly cool and innovational. I am totally open to the fact that there could have been foul play but I am also open to the fact that it could be a coverup to a system failure that was not a result of foul play. I do not know too much about how a drone light show works, but I imagine the networking would have to be incredibly strong and reliable. Considering it would not be efficient to have 200 people controlling drones and they were probably using a software to help, it’s very possible that the software being used could have malfunctioned. Although it is very suspicious that this is not the first time it has happened, so that also makes me wonder if the first incident was investigated and if it was, what was discovered?
*to the tune of It's Raining Men by The Weather Girls*
It's raining drones! Hallelujah it's raining drones!
Could you imagine tiny flying robots just descending from the sky at you? Sounds terrifying, apocalyptic, and ridiculously on brand for the time we're in at the moment. But! From the videos provided by the article, it looked like falling stars dropping fast at you while simultaneously looking like Attack of Wall-E and Pals (TM). The idea that someone would try to sabotage a light show, and it was a rival drone maker is like the epic nerd saga we deserve. And this is coming from a news outlet called "Drone DJ." which makes total sense, however, are we going to ignore the fact that drones have become popularized enough that they have their own publication website? This is like a black hole of wild and funny and it just keeps getting nerdier and funnier.
This news story sounds like it could be taken straight from a sci-fi novel. There’s a ton of cool technology to explore here, especially in regards to using drones for lighting and entertainment. It’s definitely a testament to humanity and the importance of the arts that we consistently find new ways to transform technologies into design mediums. However, there is the very concerning element of drones in that apparently they are frequently (and/or twice) known to rain from the sky due to sabotage. I would be interested to see if these incidents are actually a result of foul play, or just a cover up of poor planning and management, and I hope that investigators can get to the bottom of it. Either way, until drones can be reliably expected to stay in the air, I have no intention of watching or designing a drone light show any time soon.
We are certainly entering the dystopian cyberpunk future. I personally can't wait to reject my humanity and become a transhuman cyborg. But that's neither here nor there. The fact that individuals had to leap out of the way and dodge drones tells me that as the flying drones in production thing becomes more and more common, we're going to have to start talking about regulations and standards in the same manner that a fireworks show might. Certainly there needs to be some standard of how far away from audience members or personnel these things need to fly for it to be considered safe just in case they come crashing down from the sky. The fact that things like this have occurred before with drones really annoys me because it shows that a conversation around safety and this technology needs to be held but we simply aren't doing the work as an industry to integrate this technology into our work in a way that is safe.
Ouch. That is *expensive.* I saw a video of this on twitter the day after it happened, and all I was hoping was that no one was injured. Drones can be replaced, but people cannot. Thinking about why it could have happened, I would imagine that the organizer probably tested this performance and all the drones involved ahead of time, many times over. As the article talks about rumors of foul play, I would honestly be inclined to believe those, though I wonder WHY someone would want to do something like that. This seems like something that would more likely be a prank than a disturbance of ill will, but at the same time I know nothing about the producing company and whether they have any major rivals or stakes that would lead to foul play like this. This kind of event reminds me of the tech-centered episodes of Black Mirror, where we see first hand how life-changing technology has the insurmountable potential to backfire in one way or another. Hopefully they find the cause and are able to rectify the incident.
Just a few weeks ago, I commented on an article about a drone show. I talked in my comment a lot about the first times I had heard about these performances as well as the first time I got to see one in person. While I hoped it was never something that I would have to hear about happening, I can't say I never thought about this. I guess it is to be expected that people would think about, I mean, not much else can go wrong when you think about it. I'm curious where something like this goes wrong. It has to be something to do with the control system, seeing that so many fell out of the sky. If it was just one, I would guess a mechanical failure. That being said, you would think there would be some sort of fail safe for a software failure. For instance, personal use video drones often have a setting where you can set a "home" for it as a place it will return to if it loses signal with the controller. I wonder why there isn't some sort of backup like these in these performance drones.
Just a couple of weeks ago I commented on an article about a drone show. I mentioned all the usual stuff, how they are an incredible display of technology, they are visually stunning, and must require an immense amount of programming and coordination. I speculated a bit on how such shows could go wrong, but foul play was not even a thought that crossed my mind. That being said, I can’t begin to imagine how blind I was to miss such a major possibility for error. I have been learning a bit about network security in Introduction to Show Networking, and one of the things that John Huntington emphasizes many times in his book is that you should avoid any sort of wireless networking wherever possible. If this drone show failure was truly the result of a malicious attack, this is a perfect example. These drones obviously do not, and cannot have wires dangling off of them to some grounded control server, and as such, communicate with some sort of central server wirelessly. This leaves a very dangerous security flaw in the system. As seen with this show-gone-wrong, something, whether malicious or not, brought the drones to the ground. If this truly was a rival company that got outbid for the gig, this is an incredibly petty act that could have, and quite possible did, get people hurt. I do hope everyone who was attending is okay.
Reading this article was both mildly entertaining and highly concerning. Drones are still considered a fairly advanced form of technology in today’s time, with the potential of its uses and purposes still being explored. Because of their newer and more innovative structure, there has generally been a lot of unease and speculation about the introduction of drones into everyday life. This incident in Zhengzhou demonstrates that drones have not been entirely proven to be reliable and ready to be used on such a grand scale. The foul play aspect of this occurrence was also somewhat alarming (and humorous). Hearing about rival drone companies attempting to use radio jammers to interfere with another drone company’s lightshow sounds entirely ridiculous and very much something out of science fiction. It demonstrates the competitive culture of modern day technology (and also the pettiness of that drone company). The safety of the public should also be considered in these events; the drones of this incident were described to be small and able to be avoided, but things could be a lot worse on a larger scale.
Gosh this literally sounds likes one of my biggest fears. I am a bit old school when it comes to technology and like to keep a healthy distrust for it. I know that drones are by no means a new invention, but to me they still seem like they are straight out of the future and capable of wreaking havoc. Its terrifying to me to just picture drones falling out of the sky on the poor bystanders that were just trying to enjoy the show. As much as we think we can control technology, there are always some tricks, codes, or aspects that we don’t know exist or are unable to manipulate. What’s even scarier to me is that they believe a rival company hacked all of the drones. I didn’t realize that drones were capable of needing online security? This raises the question for me of what else besides our phones, computers, and television are capable of being hacked if drones can be?
I agree with what others have said about the safety issues with using drones. I have seen many drone light shows and worked in shows where drones are used and there are several issues to consider. First being the cost of drones as they are can be really costly. Most of the time, to do a well-designed pattern requires quite a handful of drones and the cost can add-up quickly (not to mention the whole control network system). Secondly, there’s the issue with weather. For drones to fly safely, it cannot be windy, let alone raining, and the sky should be clear for best effect. Finally, there’s safety. I’m not sure if there are regulations for drones yet (maybe in some areas there are), but whenever we use drones before, we would clear out a whole area where there's pretty much nothing directly underneath. Obviously all these limitations need to be taken into account when using drones to perform for the best effect and for everyone’s safety.
Well….I guess this is the flip side of “drones are better than fireworks.” If this was foul play, that’s incredibly reckless on the part of the rival. Someone could have been seriously hurt, not to mention that “hijacked aircraft” is not something that has a history of ending well. If this was user error or a bug, that’s a serious, serious problem that the drone company failed to address, and they need to do some redrawing. And either way, this shouldn’t have happened. Any drone better than consumer grade should have a protocol to descend at a slow safe pace (if not navigate to a ‘home’ location) if they lose contact with their control signal. If these didn’t, that’s alarming. If they did, that seems to indicate that the control signal wasn’t just jammed, it was actually taken over, which is even scarier. Honestly, it seems like this type of show shouldn’t use a control signal at all. If something went wrong it’s not like a human operator could adequately respond live with controls to 100 drones, so there’s not really any reason that they shouldn’t be running a completely preprogrammed routine. The only command they should be able to receive is an estop that would direct them to slowly and safely return to their home position.
Drone wars! I don’t know if the rival drone company story is true or not but that is pretty funny. Drone heist! Luckily those drones didn’t look too big and it seems like if you were paying attention to the show you would be able to more away from the falling drone, or you could get hit by one, sue the company, and get tuition money, who needs Port Authority when you can get hit by a drone gone rouge? I remember seeing drones being used during the 2016 Olympic games? Or it might have been the winter games I can’t remember, but that was cool. I like the lighting aspect of it all and think it would be cool to see how they operate this system. It must have been devastating for the creators to watch this happen… I get that as a viewer the catastrophe is still entertaining but to put so much work into a project and see if end up like this would be pretty hard to swallow. I think that as creators we have to keep in mind, especially in the more technical aspects, things are going to fail, things are going to go wrong, it’s apart of the process. We can’t let mistakes deter us from continuing to create though.
This is a very cool concept; I would have loved to see more of the successful portion of the show. The video was striking but I couldn’t quit tell what the intention behind the formation was, although we know from the article it was the name of a nearby shopping mall. It was shocking to watch the video and literally see these drones bouncing off of cars on the street. What type of insurance goes along with drones flying above civilians? You would think there had to be some sort of conversation beforehand about the risk and who would be liable for the damages. Especially considering that drone malfunctions of the same variety had happened before in Hong Kong. The idea of foul play really throws a movie theatre twist on the whole thing, maybe Spider Man: Far From Home wasn’t so far off, drone related incidents may become a more common issue in the future as they become more popular.
I have always been fascinated by drone light shows and the technology that is behind their success. I have never heard of one of these shows going wrong up until now and I suppose it is not all that surprising. I have had the opportunity to fly drones in the past and the complexity of their operating software really makes it difficult for them to just fall out of the sky with no warning or reason. It is also interesting that the article immediately spoke about foul play and how a rival company might have been behind the failure. These drones have propellers that are spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute which can pose a very serious threat to people under them if they begin falling from the sky. There is definitely some further investigation to be done to find out the real reason behind this failure and steps to take to ensure that it never happens again.
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