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Making Art with Drones

What can you create with 100 drones flying in formation? Intel and Electronica FutureLab partnered to answer that question, with spectacular results

Screen shot from Intel's "Drone 100 A Magical Experience"

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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On November 4, 2015, a marvelous sight appeared in the night sky near Hamburg, Germany at the Ahrenlohe Airfield. A team assembled by Intel and Ars Electronica Futurelab flew 100 unmanned drones above the Ahrenloe Airfield, not far from the city, creating series of extraordinary 3-D light sculptures, flashing and dancing to the soundtrack of a live orchestra playing below. The team broke the world record in a category few people have probably heard of:  Most Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Airborne Simultaneously. 

Eliene Augenbraun is a multimedia science producer, formerly Nature Research's Multimedia Managing Editor and Scientific American's senior video producer. Before that, she founded and ran ScienCentral, an award-winning news service providing ABC and NBC with science news stories. She has a PhD in Biology.

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