100 Drones Lights Up the Palm Springs Sky

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With exemptions from the FAA, Intel’s Drone 100 lights up the night sky in Palm Springs, CA in the first showing of the aerial experience in the United States.

To celebrate the FAA’s loosening of restrictions on who can pilot commercial drones, Intel has put on a flying robot light show—and the results are pretty.

In a new clip, 100 drones, manned by a single operator (and his walkie-talkie-sporting support team), dance across the night sky, changing color in concert and flowing between choreographed formations, like some kind of sci-fi psychedelic Esther Williams wet dream.

Intel staged and filmed the event—the first such swarm with explicit FAA approval—in the Coachella Valley desert. A small audience was on hand to witness it live, but the marketer hopes to bring similar shows to much larger audiences—crowds in stadiums, for example—in the future.