Mission Impossible – The Drone Dance
My Drone class had been experimenting with assembling and flying several types of drones over the past 6 months.
The next phase was to conduct a coordinated Drone flying routine using 6 or more Drones together.
Peter Fares – The specialist Dance Teacher, choreographed a dance routine.
Peter combined the six drones (flyers) with a dance team of 5 students, to give a public performance at the STEAM conference held at Cecil Andrews College on the 31 August 2018.
My team had two practice sessions the with the dance group the day before their public display in the performing arts centre. They had never given a public display of drone flying prior to this event.
The plan was to have the dancers follow a set piece routine to music with the drones being flown by each individual drone pilot in a routine which was complimentary to the dance routine for a period of around 4 minutes.
During the dance routine; the drones were to fly above the heads of the dancers and rotate through a 360-degree circle – did this happen – NOT Exactly!!!
The drone pilots flew as they thought fit, apart from the beginning and end the dance routine.
At the end of the dance routine – all the dancers dropped to floor level and sat in a circle.
The drones followed suit and landed in the circle of dancers – it was an awesome display of discipline and control by each drone pilot.
The challenge to the drone pilots was:
•Not to hit or contact the dancers or the audience.
•Avoid drone to drone collisions
•Do drone flips and rotations as they saw fit
•Work in the dark, view, orient and control their drone safely at all times.
•Take off and land their drone as per the dance routine.
•Have a back-up small drone, paired and ready to go at a moment’s notice.
It was a spectacular display of team based focussed drone flying – high level hand-eye and spatial awareness and concentration skills were on display and were faultless.
Well done to the Drone Pilots (7), Peter Fares (Teacher), Principal Jinman and my parent volunteer.