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Relying on AI and grouped in fleets, they can be a formidable weapon as well… as carrying out rescue missions.
By Guerric Poncet
Versatile. Deployed in enemy territory, for example, groups of thousands of AI-coordinated drones can carry out reconnaissance, surveillance or attack missions autonomously.
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Mai 2021, on a sports field near Shenzhen, the megalopolis that is home to the world’s high-tech factory in China. HighGreat engineers line up thousands of drones equipped with multicolored LEDs on the lawn and, at nightfall, take them off in successive groups. Smashing the world record – Chinese too – of 3,281 devices in simultaneous flight, they managed to fly 5,164, in a breathtaking spectacle that proves to the world that China has indeed reinvented fireworks. The luminous drones draw the Earth, a dragon, then the new Chinese space station… A performance unimaginable a decade ago, so complex is the coordination of flight trajectories and the management of communications.
Behind this technological and playful prowess…
Shutterstock / Andy Dean Photography – Shutterstock / Dmytro Larin – Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology
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