According to an Intel Patent, Drones Could Be Used to Create Mobile Billboards in the Near Future

Promising Approach

Today, drone light shows are no longer some­thing new, which is not the case with drone-based dig­i­tal sig­nage, which may become very pop­u­lar in the near future. Accord­ing to a recent Intel patent, drones can be used to cre­ate mobile bill­boards that adapt to the envi­ron­ment and audi­ence. Of course, not every­thing that is patent­ed turns into a real prod­uct or ser­vice, how­ev­er, one day it may become a replace­ment for some of the forms of adver­tis­ing that com­pa­nies use today.

Intel and drones

When Intel isn’t busy reju­ve­nat­ing its foundry busi­ness and fight­ing AMD for the CPU per­for­mance crown, the com­pa­ny is explor­ing dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies and their uses. For exam­ple, Intel’s R&D divi­sion is keen on drones that can be used as a more spec­tac­u­lar alter­na­tive to fire­works and cre­ate inter­est­ing visu­al spec­ta­cles dur­ing major events.

Intel has host­ed sev­er­al daz­zling drone light shows in recent years, notably the com­pa­ny’s 50th Anniver­sary Enlight­en­ment Event and the Wal­mart Drone Cel­e­bra­tion Light Show. And most recent­ly, the com­pa­ny deployed 1,000 light drones as part of the pro­mo­tion of its Arc Alchemist GPUs, which they promised to equip mil­lions of gam­ing PCs around the world, although to date this has not been done.

Patent for Special Digital Drone Signage

In gen­er­al, it is not sur­pris­ing that Intel has a num­ber of patents for this kind of tech­nol­o­gy, but one such patent, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 4, 2022, is US Pat. no. 11,217,126 — dis­clos­ing meth­ods and sys­tems for cre­at­ing “ad hoc dig­i­tal signage/custom dig­i­tal sig­nage” for pub­lic or pri­vate dis­plays deserves spe­cial atten­tion. To begin with, any drone light show put on dur­ing a pub­lic event requires months of painstak­ing work to chore­o­graph a swarm of drones to the pro­posed ani­ma­tion, find the right spot, and test the deploy­ment on site to make sure every­thing works with rea­son­able accu­ra­cy and safe­ty. .

So, in essence, this patent describes how to cre­ate a kind of drone-based bill­board that can be eas­i­ly moved and recon­fig­ured on the fly to dis­play dif­fer­ent types of adver­tis­ing. These meth­ods include drones with pro­jec­tion sys­tems and the process of col­lect­ing data from var­i­ous sen­sors to ensure the abil­i­ty of the UAV to adapt to the audi­ence and even move with it as need­ed.

In sit­u­a­tions where space is lim­it­ed, the drones will scan the geom­e­try of the envi­ron­ment and adjust the pro­jec­tion size to fit a small­er area. For areas where larg­er pro­jec­tions are pos­si­ble, mul­ti­ple drones will work togeth­er to com­pose a seam­less dig­i­tal sig­nage, where one of them will act as an assis­tant to adjust the view­ing angle of the pro­jec­tion and mea­sure the lev­el of audi­ence inter­est. But that’s not all! If the sign is not attract­ing atten­tion, the con­trol­ling drone can change the con­tent dis­played by oth­er devices.

The pro­jec­tion sur­face can also be spe­cial, in the sense that a swarm of drones can split into two groups — one will deploy the pro­jec­tion, and the oth­er will be pro­ject­ed onto it. This patent even details the spa­tial audio sys­tem for such video ads and how to cus­tomize the con­tent to suit the mood and gen­er­al inter­ests of the audi­ence.

If that sounds crazy to you, just think of the Russ­ian start­up StartRock­et pro­posed just a few years ago, which involved using satel­lites to illu­mi­nate the night sky with adver­tise­ments, or the Amer­i­can idea of ​​using robots to paint adver­tise­ments on the sur­face of the moon!

For­tu­nate­ly, even the rel­a­tive­ly mun­dane drone adver­tis­ing idea pre­sent­ed in the patent has yet to mate­ri­al­ize into a real ser­vice. At the time of writ­ing, the com­pa­ny offers drone light shows with 200–500 drones at prices rang­ing from $99,000 to $299,000, as well as cus­tom plans for large projects with 500+ drones (price is deter­mined by indi­vid­ual agree­ment with the cus­tomer). These drone light shows are posi­tioned as an alter­na­tive to fire­works as they are safer, clean­er, qui­eter and green­er.

Intel drone light show ded­i­cat­ed to the announce­ment of a Sam­sung lap­top with 5G sup­port.

Fly safe­ly. Peace and good­ness to all!