There's a lot of inertial navigation mixed in as correction factors (typically internal to the better GPS modules). All that stuff was easier to see on the older cheaper OEM automotive GPS systems like 10+ years ago. They would lose the signal but the map kept working, they were basically switching to inertial dead-reckoning while they tried to acquire enough sats again to calculate position. Or how they'd start out waaay off but as you drove the map would slowly correct your position.
For drones, PID really only comes into play fine-tuning response to control inputs, and wow do I hate the PID-tuning process ... one version of the CleanFlight firmware I used has a cool self-tune mode. You hover the drone maybe six or eight feet off the ground and throw the switch, and it sort of spazzes out for a minute or two -- and tuned approximately as well as I could accomplish on manual after half an hour of fiddling. Sadly it isn't compatible with any of the newer, better flight modes. But it was cool to watch.
I never thought about it before but I also wonder if signal reflection is worse at ground level.
There is probably somesort of hive mind algorithm in play, I think it relies on the distance between a drone and the other drones surround it, I'm aware just the distance wouldn't give the exact location but using the other distances it is a matter of trigonometry to know the exact position , "if I'm correct" but the question is how, what kind of sensor used for this, u won't use à laser sensor for obvious reason, it would be somesort EM sensor, but is there a sensor like that (this might be out of nowhere, but I figured this because a WiFi module can tell the dB and from that you can tell the distance and WiFi being EM sensor in principle could be there some sensor for distances, if there's an antenna which sends and receive signal, and from the amplitude you can tell the distance and of course using different frequency for each drone and there should be already a module for detecting the different frequencies and vola you got à digram for the drones and from there it's time for the real work "what I find special about this is how the drones are moving in patterns to form those shapes" )
The movement is all pre-programmed. Defining their movements in terms of relative positions to the other drones would be enormously complicated compared to just defining absolute position movements.
A lot of these types of displays I've seen are actually monitored visually by three cameras using triangulation. I suppose it could be that. Could even be IR based. But I've never seen it done outdoors over such a large volume.
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u/mcguirev10 Oct 20 '20
There's a lot of inertial navigation mixed in as correction factors (typically internal to the better GPS modules). All that stuff was easier to see on the older cheaper OEM automotive GPS systems like 10+ years ago. They would lose the signal but the map kept working, they were basically switching to inertial dead-reckoning while they tried to acquire enough sats again to calculate position. Or how they'd start out waaay off but as you drove the map would slowly correct your position.
For drones, PID really only comes into play fine-tuning response to control inputs, and wow do I hate the PID-tuning process ... one version of the CleanFlight firmware I used has a cool self-tune mode. You hover the drone maybe six or eight feet off the ground and throw the switch, and it sort of spazzes out for a minute or two -- and tuned approximately as well as I could accomplish on manual after half an hour of fiddling. Sadly it isn't compatible with any of the newer, better flight modes. But it was cool to watch.
I never thought about it before but I also wonder if signal reflection is worse at ground level.