Today Intel announced the Intel Shooting Stardrone, the company’s first drone created specifically for entertainment light shows. The drone is designed with safety and creativity in mind with a light-weight structure and virtually limitless color combinations. The fleet is easily programmed, assembled and operated to create choreographed images in the nighttime sky.

Weighing in at 280 grams or less than the weight of a volleyball, the Intel Shooting Star drone is constructed with a soft frame made of flexible plastics and foam and contains no screws. The quadcopter’s propellers are also protected by covered cages – all features designed to ensure the drone is safe to fly, is splash-proof and can fly in light rain.

• Type: Quadcopter with encased propellers
• Size: 384 x 384 x 93mm
• Rotor Diameter: 6" (~15cm)
• Max Take Off Weight: 280g
• Flight Time: Up to 20 mins
• Max Range: 1.5 km
• Max Tolerable Wind Speed: 10 m/s
• Max GPS mode Airspeed: 10 m/s
• Max Light Show Airspeed: 3 m/s

The Shooting Star drone features built-in LED lights that can create over 4 billion color combinations based on RGBW (red, green, blue and white) LED. With the improved software and animation interface on the Intel Shooting Star drone, a light show can now be created in a matter of days instead of weeks or months.

Intel’s algorithims can automate the animation creation process by using an image and quickly calculating the number of drones needed, determining where drones should be placed and formulating the fastest path to create the image in the sky.

The light show software also runs a complete fleet check prior to each flight and is able to select the most optimized drones for each flight based on battery life, GPS reception and more. Additionally, the entire fleet of Intel Shooting Star drones can be controlled by one computer.

Recently, Intel put the fleet of Intel Shooting Star drones to the test in Germany and set a new Guinness World Record for having The Most UAVs Airborne Simultaneously with 500 Intel Shooting Star drones lighting up the night sky.

Intal has also worked with the FAA to receive a Part 107 Waiver to fly these drones as a fleet with one pilot at night in the U.S.

Intel believes drones are an important computing platform for the future and is continuing to invest in technologies and companies that will enable the company to provide the best compute, sensor, communications and software integration for the growing drone ecosystem. To this point, Intel has acquired MAVinci GmbH, a drone company based in Germany that offers flight planning software.

With this transaction, Intel is gaining expertise in flight planning software algorithms and also fixed-wing drone design capabilities that complement the technology and knowledge Intel previously acquired from Ascending Technologies.

In August, Intel introduced the developer-focused Intel Aero Platform and the Intel Aero Ready to Fly Drone that will be available by end of the year. And prior to that, Intel collaborated with Yuneec, to launch the Yuneec Typhoon H with Intel RealSense Technology that provides collision avoidance features.