Marking the end of a longtime tradition, the Fourth of July celebration at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will not feature a fireworks show this year. Instead, there will be a drone show. The move comes as some venues have switched from fireworks to drone shows -- in which a fleet of drones performs a choreographed light show -- to celebrate the 4th of July. But drone shows have fallen flat for some. Notably Redondo Beach and Laguna Beach switched back to fireworks after trying out drone shows, and some promoters of fireworks shows have voiced criticism over efforts to transition to drone shows.

Drone shows are becoming ever more popular. Once rarities, they are now appearing at occasions ranging from birthday parties and weddings, to major sporting events. Some theme parks even have resident drone shows that take place multiple nights in a row. Glastonbury music festival had its first drone show in 2024. And record-breaking displays are pushing the technology to its limits – the biggest drone show in history took place in China last October.

Video shows the moment drones started falling from the sky during a drone show at Eola Lake in Orlando, Florida on Dec. 21, 2024. The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report on Thursday into what went wrong at a Florida drone show last month that caused some of the aircraft to go rogue, leaving a little boy seriously injured. The mishap took place during a Christmas light show put on by Sky Elements at Lake Eola Park in Orlando on Dec. 21, 2024. Hundreds of people were watching the aerial show when several of the drones flew out of formation – some colliding with one another before falling to the ground. One of the rogue drones struck a 7-year-old boy in the face and chest, knocking him out upon impact.

Video shows the moment drones started falling from the sky during a drone show at Eola Lake in Orlando, Florida on Dec. 21, 2024. A 7-year-old Florida boy who was injured when drones collided and fell into a crowd at a holiday airshow over the weekend underwent open heart surgery, his parents said. Adriana Edgerton and Jessica Lumsden, parents of Alexander, said one of the red and green-lit drones struck him and knocked him out upon impact, causing a chest injury, Fox Orlando reported. Hundreds of drones being used as part of a Saturday night aerial light show in Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando appeared to be flying into position before several started falling from the sky before slamming to the ground, according to videos posted online. Alexander, a 7-year-old boy, has undergone heart surgery after he was struck by a falling drone during a holiday airshow in Orlando, his parents said.

Video shows the moment drones started falling from the sky during a drone show at Eola Lake in Orlando, Florida on Dec. 21, 2024. A child was hospitalized on Saturday after being hit by a drone that was part of an Orlando, Florida holiday drone show. According to the Orlando Fire Department, a 7-year-old boy was transported to the hospital because of injuries sustained from the falling drones, FOX 35 in Orlando reported. In a video posted online by X user MosquitoCoFl, hundreds of drones being used as part of an aerial light show appeared to be flying into position before several started falling from the sky before slamming to the ground. A man could be heard saying to children nearby, "Oh no! I don't believe they're supposed to be falling."

Gen-Swarms is an innovative method that leverages and combines the capabilities of deep generative models with reactive navigation algorithms to automate the creation of drone shows. Advancements in deep generative models, particularly diffusion models, have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in generating high-quality 2D images. Building on this success, various works have extended diffusion models to 3D point cloud generation. In contrast, alternative generative models such as flow matching have been proposed, offering a simple and intuitive transition from noise to meaningful outputs. However, the application of flow matching models to 3D point cloud generation remains largely unexplored. Gen-Swarms adapts these models to automatically generate drone shows. Existing 3D point cloud generative models create point trajectories which are impractical for drone swarms. In contrast, our method not only generates accurate 3D shapes but also guides the swarm motion, producing smooth trajectories and accounting for potential collisions through a reactive navigation algorithm incorporated into the sampling process. For example, when given a text category like Airplane, Gen-Swarms can rapidly and continuously generate numerous variations of 3D airplane shapes. Our experiments demonstrate that this approach is particularly well-suited for drone shows, providing feasible trajectories, creating representative final shapes, and significantly enhancing the overall performance of drone show generation.

This paper introduces CLIPSwarm, a new algorithm designed to automate the modeling of swarm drone formations based on natural language. The algorithm begins by enriching a provided word, to compose a text prompt that serves as input to an iterative approach to find the formation that best matches the provided word. The algorithm iteratively refines formations of robots to align with the textual description, employing different steps for "exploration" and "exploitation". Our framework is currently evaluated on simple formation targets, limited to contour shapes. A formation is visually represented through alpha-shape contours and the most representative color is automatically found for the input word. To measure the similarity between the description and the visual representation of the formation, we use CLIP [1], encoding text and images into vectors and assessing their similarity. Subsequently, the algorithm rearranges the formation to visually represent the word more effectively, within the given constraints of available drones. Control actions are then assigned to the drones, ensuring robotic behavior and collision-free movement. Experimental results demonstrate the system's efficacy in accurately modeling robot formations from natural language descriptions. The algorithm's versatility is showcased through the execution of drone shows in photorealistic simulation with varying shapes. We refer the reader to the supplementary video for a visual reference of the results.

There may not have been any fans in the Olympic Stadium, but Japan still found a way to put on a show for the opening of the 2020 Summer Games. The host country charmed early with the parade of nations, which featured an orchestrated video game soundtrack, and then showed off the type of creativity it's known for with a performance involving the Olympic pictograms. But Tokyo saved the biggest spectacle for last. Towards the end of the ceremony, a fleet of 1,824 drones took to the skies above the Olympic Stadium. Initially arrayed in the symbol of the 2020 Games, they then took on the shape of the Earth before a rendition of John Lenon's "Imagine," which was reworked by Hans Zimmer for the Olympics, played across the stadium.

Typically, you've got an artist on stage singing songs and stuff, and then a bunch of spotlights beaming columns of color through some fake smoke. But something new is on the horizon, and it's equal parts creepy and futuristic. Swarms of artificially intelligent drones are starting to show up on stages around the world. Some, like the ones on Drake's latest tour, of are tiny flying lights that float above the stage. Others, like a recent Cirque du Soleil experience, featured more complex aircraft outfitted with lampshades that produced an almost ghostly effect.

Intel Corporation flies 2,018 Intel Shooting Star drones over its Folsom, California, facility, in July 2018. The drone light show set a Guinness World Records title for the most unmanned aerial vehicles airborne simultaneously. SAN FRANCISCO -- Three years ago, in a hallway at Intel, a small team of people working on drones discussed whether it would be possible to fly one hundred drones over the Robert Noyce Building, Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, and have them form the shape of the company's logo. They didn't plan on pursuing it seriously but it became a pet project for Natalie Cheung, who wondered at the time how they could fly multiple drones with one pilot. Now, Cheung is the general manager of Drone Light Shows at Intel and has helped put on hundreds of choreographed drone shows -- and the drones can make a lot more shapes than just the Intel logo.