Drone Swarm Creates Star Trek Logo In London Sky
garymortimer writes "As a harbinger for the Paramount film 'Star Trek — Into Darkness', starting in May in Europe's cinemas, last night a swarm of 30 mini-helicopters equipped with the LED lights drew the Star Trek logo into the skies over London. The choreography for the show was developed by Ars Electronica Futurelab from Linz (Austria). Quadrocopter maker Ascending Technologies GmbH from Munich (Germany) provided the aircrafts."
If the Doctor had to intervene before they actually created the whole Enterprise, and if Daleks were at the root of it?
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Cause, they look barely visible at 1080p, with or without the background lights.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Fascinating.
All I can say is, "Bad Robots!"
Cause, they look barely visible at 1080p, with or without the background lights.
I blame the smog.
Be seeing you...
provided the aircrafts.
Plural of "aircraft" is -- "aircraft".
Don't try this in Boston
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Who edits this stuff?? (the video, not the submission)
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In related news, The Pirate Bay is now formally refusing to take further donations for its airborne drone server plan. A London spokesman for the website said, "We've got more than enough capacity and redundancy now!", as he laughed mischievously and looked up towards the quadrocopter-filled sky. Paramount did not take our calls for comment.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Figures...the emblem is backwards.
Having just crawled out of my rock I didn't know there was a new star trek movie. Thats really cool...checks trailer... boo... crawls back into rock.
Note to producers: Star Trek != Expendables and nobody is impressed by senseless CGI overload.
The best startrek ever no contest was star trek iv ...the worst ever will be this film.
It shoul;d have been shaped like the Enterprise and flown in the "forward" direction, not that would be cool.
In SF, they would have been fined by the FAA.
They probably tried and the FAA probably told them to fuck off.
It's impossible to get a commercial UAS license for urban areas currently. Not to mention the airframe needs to be certified too.
Slashdot needs to do something about this. How many posts are that long and have 20 links in them? Shouldn't be that hard to filter such posts.
I flagged the post. I encourage others to do the same.
But a little disturbing and creepy too. The swarm behavior they program into these things is amazing, and gives me Terminator flashbacks. It looks like intelligent behavior.
Every time you post a comment to his fucking nonsense, you're giving him food. Check out the links directly below the top paragraph, the bolded one liners. Some of those are posts from a few days ago. Flag it, hide it and move on, he's obviously in pain.
... whatever
Just what we need. More advertisement. We do not have enough of it it, so please fill the sky with it.
We all saw the formation flying quads before in lab environment and what do they decide to do with this knowledge? Advertisement! ..."
I am sure that when we will have effective robots, they will not be used to do anything you think they can do, but rather walk in the streets, tap your shoulder and when you look, they say "Hey mister, did you hear about this great new product.
It will then follow you around till you placed an order. At that moment the next one comes along.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The state in the UK is if the unmanned aerial system weighs less than 20kg (basically, like most RC models) the regulation is correspondingly light and commercial operation is allowed without the need for certified systems or to put a G-xxxx registration on the aircraft. However, a permit is still required to operate and the operator must have a qualification to fly the aircraft (effectively a "drone pilot license") if it is to be flown in a populated area.
Over 20kg and the UAS needs airworthiness approval.
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP722.pdf
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I'd imagine that people had no trouble seeing them. Have you ever tried to take a picture of the night sky with a digital camera? Most of them, especially the cheap P&S or cell phone cameras that people would actually be likely to have on them, have a hard time picking up the stars too, even though they're plainly visible to anybody who bothers to look.
The Only interest I have in seeing this movie is when it comes out on one of the Satellite TV channels so I can DVR it and skip through it to watch the space scenes. The acting, script & sets are literally painful to me. Its like watching a two year old play with matchbox cars, flying them through the air like their jet fighters. Sure it may have moments of interest, but they are few and far between. For goodness sakes half of the sets were commercial/utility sites with a few computer consoles added (brewery, electrical substation).
obscures the skies, these will be our constellations. ...interrupted every five minutes or so when the drones re-form themselves into an ad for hemorrhoid cream.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
At least normal billboards don't fall on my head when they malfunction. Cool swarm behavior though.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Depends entirely on where you are.
Most urban locations have so much light pollution that the amount of stars you can see if hugely reduced. On a clear summer night out my back yard, most of the stars are washed out in the background light, and only the really bright stuff is visible.
I should think in a city like London, the amount of visible stars wouldn't be all that much.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you dont want to tolerate it, set your threshold to hide -1 comments. Thats the whole point of comment moderation thresholds.
The problem with that is that too many idiots get mod points and inappropriately mod down good posts before many people get to see them. Setting your threshold to hide -1 comments means you will miss many that should never have been modded down in the first place.
It's not like it's hard to identify and ignore if you want.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Cause, they look barely visible at 1080p, with or without the background lights.
I blame the smog.
Cor blimey me ol China, there's a right pea souper tonight, chim-chimminee, stroike a loight, up the apple and pears to the rub a dub dub.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think they might have made a bit more of a fuss about this if they'd stumbled upon actual emergent artificial intelligence, don't you?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most of them, especially the cheap P&S or cell phone cameras that people would actually be likely to have on them, have a hard time picking up the stars too, even though they're plainly visible to anybody who bothers to look.
Well, besides those shots not being taken by a "cheap P&S or cell phone", and the photo where you actually see the lights being clearly overexposed or photoshopped to make the lights visible (the entire sky is glowing from the photo-manipulation) - I was asking has anyone ACTUALLY seen that stunt, live.
Not, if it would be visible, perhaps, maybe, at certain conditions, with binoculars, from a certain angle, if you are 7 feet tall, standing on a hill... whatever.
Has anyone actually witnessed it take place?
Cause to me... that looks like a failed performance.
Cause, if you gotta zoom in and overexpose and whatnot just so the camera would catch that light (as opposed to a human eyeball with no zoom capability, and highly limited night vision) - they could have just as well done the whole thing on a computer, and upload that to youtube instead.
Then again, quadcopters equipped with invisible lights, performing for an audience of none, WOULD BE a publicity stunt very in the spirit of the movie.
All hype, no substance and no actual relation to the established canon or plot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I haven't upgraded my CGA Eyes yet.
320x200 Black, White, Cyan, and Magenta is good enough for me, If I feel ambitious, I can switch to Black, Yellow, Green and and Red.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not to be off-topic from the story, but really.. just set your viewing threshold from -1 to 0. Comments that were flagged for abuse won't even show up. That is what /. did for all of us.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
And I forgot to add the relevant comment to the story, but it's more like an annoyance with the movie's title... Isn't it, "Star Trek Into Darkness" ? No hyphen..? Man, that's an awful title. I wonder if they printed the posters with a typo and said, "Frack it... let's just change the title."
No sig for you! Come back one year!