Move Over Fireworks—Drone Shows Are Taking to the Skies

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Drone shows are replacing fireworks for summer celebrations. They’re safer and more environmentally friendly but complicated to program and run. A recent preprint paper proposes an algorithmic solution that can take some technical challenges out of drone operators’ hands and give engineers more creative control. Host Rachel Feltman speaks with researchers Mac Schwager, an associate professor at the aeronautics and astronautics department at Stanford University, and Eduardo Montijano, an associate professor at the department of computer science and systems engineering at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, about their work and what it would take to move the algorithm from theory to the skies. Recommended reading: Read the research team’s paper, which was presented at a 2024 workshop: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-91813-1_6 And released as a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15899 How Do Fireworks Actually Work? Here’s the Explosive Science https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/the-science-of-fireworks/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI.
0:02.0	AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into.
0:05.0	ServiceNow puts AI to work for people across your business,
0:09.0	removing friction and frustration for your employees,
0:12.0	supercharging productivity for your developers,
0:15.0	providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make customers happier.
0:19.0	All built into a single platform you can
0:21.9	use right now. That's why the world works with ServiceNow. Visit ServiceNow.com
0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.
0:53.6	This 4th of July, some celebrants who flocked their local parks and waterfronts might not take in the iconic sights and sounds of a fireworks display.
1:02.7	In some cases, those traditional explosives could be replaced with swarms of colorful drones.
1:09.1	Drone light shows have been popping up more and more in recent years,
1:12.9	replacing or supplementing fireworks at the Olympics, and even some Super Bowl halftime shows.
1:18.9	They're dazzling, precise, and a lot safer than explosions. Besides the obvious risks of
1:25.2	setting off incendiary devices, fireworks shows also raise environmental concerns.
1:30.5	Studies suggest these big displays have a market impact on local air quality in the hours that follow.
1:36.6	But swapping out fireworks for drones isn't simple.
1:40.2	Every one of those displays takes painstaking effort from a team of engineers.
1:44.8	They have to plot the movement of every single drone frame by frame.
1:49.6	Today's guests recently published a paper that offers an AI-powered solution.
1:55.0	Matt Swager is an associate professor in the aeronautics and astronautics department at Stanford University,
2:09.6	and Eduardo Montecano is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Thank you both so much for coming on to chat.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scientific American, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scientific American and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.