China Sets World Record: 10,200 Drones Fly at Once in Perfect Sync for National Day Show

The 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (proclaimed on October 1, 1949, by the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong) was marked by a big celebration in the nation that is now the motor of global capitalism. To show their tech prowess, the Chinese decided to break a world record (set by themselves a few years ago) with a monumental show.

The city of Shenzhen is probably one of the pillars of today’s planetary industrialized manufacturing, and the speed at which development has accelerated in the last decades has earned the nickname ‘Shenzhen Speed.’ The third most populous city in China and ranking fourth on the list of the world’s busiest container ports, Shenzhen is easily one of the world’s beating hearts. And boy, oh, boy, did they put on a show for their republic’s anniversary.

There’s a company in the city that’s specialized in making light show drones. You might have seen them in recent years growing in popularity, but the idea is simple: get a bunch of remotely controlled drones up in the sky and have them fly in formation. Sounds like an untrained monkey could do it, right? No, because a drone light show implies a specific scenario involving perfect harmony between each drone. And this is where thing get nerd-level-tech complicated.

You know what? Play the video below and see for yourself what a 10,197-drone performance looks like because that’s what Shenzhen DAMODA Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd did a few days ago. That’s three pieces short of ten thousand two hundred drones flying in perfect sync. And, as if that weren’t a feat in itself, note this: every one of those flying copters was controlled via the same computer.

The level of technology implied by this achievement is second only to the grandeur of the show – not only did the drones perform impeccably, but they also put on a show within a show. With so many of them stacked together, the computerized lampoons doubled as a hovering display, with each drone acting like a pixel on a screen.

The result is beyond words – literally. Guinness World Records recognized the performance with yet another official certificate. By the way, the record was set by the same DAMODA company in 2020, with ‘only’ 3,051 drones. This Septemebr, DAMODA broke it with a 7,598-drone show.  The flying apparatuses used in the show have a very blue-collared name, ‘Outdoor V3 formation UAV’, capable of automatic control, automatic return, and intelligent storage.

Each unit is fitted with quadruple 5.5-inch (140 mm) propeller blades, and the battery pack has enough juice to keep the 1.2-lb (530 grams) drone in the air for 35 minutes in hovering mode. For a show, however, the autonomy is reduced to 20 minutes.

The drone can be controlled over a 1,640-foot radius (500 meters), it can fly in level four winds (according to the Beaufort scale, that’s up to 18 mph / 29 kph), and reach a cruising speed of 26 feet per second (8 meters per second). That’s 18 mph (29 kph).

Thanks to GPS and BDS navigation (aided by Real-Time Kinematic positioning - RTK), the drones can be pinpointed with an accuracy of less than an inch (20 mm, to be exact). The Outdoor V3 formation UAV has a 10-watt LED with a full range of RGB colors, enabling a +10,000-unit swarm to display virtually anything in full color, as we can see below.