On the evening of July 4, the residents of Seoul were treated to a nice surprise. Over the Han River, the government planned a real visual show, using 300 drones. During the ten-minute event, kept secret until the last minute so as not to attract crowds, the devices produced various figures aimed at recalling the good behavior to adopt in these times of epidemic. Wearing a mask, social distancing, hand washing ... All the instructions were recalled thanks to this colorful ballet, and a thank you message was even sent to the hospital staff.
If drones have recently been used more often for surveillance of compliance with barrier gestures, other cases of similar shows have been identified since the start of the epidemic. On May 15, 140 drones illuminated the sky of Nashville (Texas) to pay tribute to the caregivers of the city. An initiative also implemented in Zhuhai, China, in April.
Intel, champion of this practice
Even before the Covid-19 appeared, drone shows were starting to become more and more popular, especially in Asia. Many specialists in the region are wondering if this new kind of event could gradually replace a centuries-old tradition: fireworks. Indeed, if the latter are still essential for any national holiday in France or the United States for example, they were banned at the end of 2017 in more than 400 cities in China, the country where they were nevertheless invented. To justify this reversal, the authorities argued that the fireworks caused too much damage to the environment and serious accidents. As recently as last December, seven people died and thirteen others were injured following an explosion at a Chinese factory specializing in pyrotechnics.
If China has thus become a specialist in drone shows, it is nevertheless an American company which holds the world record for the number of machines flying simultaneously. In 2018, for its fiftieth anniversary, the Intel company took off 2,018 drones for a five-minute show. By that date, the chipmaker had already organized 300 such events in 16 countries, including the half-time of the 2017 Super Bowl, or the inauguration of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics the following year.
