Drone show on a boat?

[hotponyshoes]

Just caught a bit of a program on one of those massive cruise liners.
Part of the entertainment was an indoor drone show.

How do they do that?
The drones will be moving at the same speed as the ship when launched but once in the air, why don't they crash into the walls?
(Or rather, one of the walls crash into them?)

Is there some sort of static transmitter/receiver you can get that they lock to and follow?

 

[knighty]

is the air that they're hovering in moving the same as the boat?

I've never been on a bit boat... but that makes sense to me... otherwise people would talk about the feeling of wind as you and the boat moved but the air didn't?

 

[Turbo]

Probably the same as a fly in your car taking off when you're doing 70mph on the M6.

 

[Sam0117]

It’s all about air movement/wind…….. if it’s indoors there’s no wind pushing the drones, so they just move with the ship, if it was outdoors then they would need to have them follow a signal to allow the drones to track and say with the ship, just think your in a train doing 100mph you can still walk eat an drink easily, you try do it while on top of the train, total different story lol

 

[bourbon]

yeah, that's one I could never figure out. But it's not high on my list of things to ponder on.

 

[Tangledfeet]

I'd assume it uses 'swarm' intelligence; they form a network and are all communicating with each other..? I get the impression that only one actually needs to be controlled then.

Interesting one.

 

[CornishPete]

Air is moving same speed as the ship too.

yeah, that's one I could never figure out. But it's not high on my list of things to ponder on.

It''s all relative, here's one to ponder: think about the most basic calculation: average speed = distance travelled/time taken. If I'm on a train travelling at 10m/s and I throw a ball from the back of the carriage to the front say 20m and it takes 1 second then the ball is travelling at 20m/s but that's relative to me, to someone stood on the platform it's actually travelled 30m in 1 second because of the forward speed of the train therefore it's travelling at 30m/s. And thousands of m/s relative to a little green man on a spaceship!!

 

[Dev]

Just caught a bit of a program on one of those massive cruise liners.
Part of the entertainment was an indoor drone show.

How do they do that?
The drones will be moving at the same speed as the ship when launched but once in the air, why don't they crash into the walls?
(Or rather, one of the walls crash into them?)

Is there some sort of static transmitter/receiver you can get that they lock to and follow?

The same reason if you let go of something on a plane it doesn’t suddenly shoot backwards at 500 knots



Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

 

[addjunkie]

Just caught a bit of a program on one of those massive cruise liners.
Part of the entertainment was an indoor drone show.

you need to get out more watching stuff like that on the box! Though there not boxes any more, but flat things!

 

[brightspark]

might explain

 

[hotponyshoes]

you need to get out more watching stuff like that on the box! Though there not boxes any more, but flat things!

Ha, actually I had been out!
Came back to find her asleep with the tv on.
Just saw that bit before I turned the telly off.. then got pondering...

 

[hotponyshoes]

The same reason if you let go of something on a plane it doesn’t suddenly shoot backwards at 500 knots

I get that it won't suddenly shoot backwards as the object is already traveling at 500knots. It's been accelerated to 500k by the plane.

But, say you let go of a bowling ball on a plane, once you have let go off it there is nothing (apart from the air in the plane) to keep it traveling at 500k.
And gravity should just pull it towards the center of the earth in a stright line from where you dropped it.

If the roof to the floor of the plane was high enough then, the ball should start to decelerate in the forward direction and land on the floor slightly behind the point you dropped it from.

If you could reduce the speed the ball fell then it would land even further back.

So if you stopped the ball falling altogether (ie it hovered just like a drone) it would go towards the back of the plane as it lost forward momentum.

Why does this not happen with a drone on a boat? Ok, the boat won't be doing 500k but why don't the drones all slowly move backwards?

 

[hotponyshoes]

might explain

Sort of.
I can't help thinking that if you shook that jar about a bit the butterfly would just be bashing around on the walls of it though!

But yes, the drones on the boat are kept in place by the air in the room and that air is being pushed along at boat speed by the boat itself.
So basically, depending on the air resistance of a object/drone it can stay in place until something like a rapid change in speed overcomes the air resistance.