Night, 11:30 PM.
To avoid interfering with the school basketball team's training, they could only schedule the test after the gymnasium closed at night.
The drones they chose were relatively small and had poor resistance to airflow. Since they were testing dense cluster formation flying, the relatively enclosed environment of the basketball gymnasium suited their requirements.
"Are you ready?" Nick clapped his hands and asked the busy crowd.
"OK!" Everyone signaled back to him.
"Then let's begin."
Hearing his voice, everyone immediately sprang into action, neatly placing the two hundred and forty charged drones on the court in the middle of the gymnasium.
In addition, a pillar-shaped device was placed in each of the four corners of the venue; these were the Digital Coordinate Base Points they had researched and manufactured.
To put it simply, this was a spatial coordinate locator. Besides locating the coordinates of the device itself, it would also send this coordinate information to the host computer and to all drones within the space enclosed by the four points, helping the drones locate and calculate their own positions.
The principle is somewhat similar to GPS or our Google Maps, except that it achieves more precise three-dimensional spatial positioning within a smaller range.
"Power on the drones and base points, and initiate network connection!" Nick looked at the data on the laptop in front of him and gave the command to everyone.
"Network connection in progress. Network connection successful, status normal."
"Loading the 'Militech' System."
"Loading... 5%, 10%, 15%... 100%. Loading successful!"
At the same time, the red lights on the two hundred and forty drones placed on the court quickly turned green, one after another.
"Check drones No. 67, 142... 213, and 238." Nick shouted after looking at the data on the screen.
"Received." Terry, standing on the floor, immediately began checking quickly.
"Three faulty drones are removed from the test; the rest restarted normally."
"OK!"
Nick took a deep breath, opened the system control window on the laptop, and clicked the start option.
Buzz... As Nick clicked confirm, the propeller of the drone labeled No. 1 on the floor began to spin rapidly. This was followed by No. 2, No. 3, No. 4... until the last one started up, and everyone's suspended hearts finally settled.
At the same time, 237 white spheres appeared sequentially on Nick's laptop screen.
"Next, take off!" Nick said, then used the mouse to select all the spheres in the window and dragged them upward in the coordinate system.
Simultaneously, the 237 drones parked on the ground quickly ascended to a position about 1.5 meters above the ground and hovered.
"The reaction speed is quite responsive," Nick said, smiling at the sight.
Zack also nodded and said, "The overall coordination is quite good. The drone formation started ascending and hovering almost simultaneously, and look, the entire altitude is basically on one plane."
"Next, we will demonstrate multi-drone formation control technology." Nick used the mouse to select 20 of the spheres and separated them from the array.
At the same time, 20 drones flew out of the hovering fleet and hovered in the air by themselves.
"Next, 20-drone formation movement!"
Up, down, left, right, flying in an arc trajectory... Watching the drones complete various designated movements in the air, everyone couldn't help but cheer.
Success! The hard work of the past month and more had not been in vain. From the first line of code to the modification of the drones, the development of the digital coordinate equipment, and the first cluster flight experiment today.
Although the whole process was arduous, they finally saw results. When they saw these drones flying in the air, everyone felt not only excitement and joy but also a hint of emotion.
This emotion was largely an affirmation of the fruits of their labor over the past month. For young people, there is nothing more pride-inducing than achieving results through their own efforts.
"The battery is almost depleted. Let's proceed with the last project: Large drone Cluster Array Deformation Technology."
Under everyone's gaze, Nick spoke, then selected all the drones and imported a pre-coded model data set into them.
The hovering drones in the air quickly converged toward the center of the gymnasium according to the model data, forming a suspended cube.
"Alright, next is array deformation." As Nick entered the command, the virtual cube in the window gradually transformed into a sphere. Simultaneously, the cube formed by the drones also began to slowly deform.
Snap... Just as the drones were about to form a sphere, all the selected white spheres on the monitor suddenly turned red, and one after another, they fell.
At the same time, the drones hovering in the air, preparing to form the sphere, instantly seemed to lose control, swaying wildly left and right, then colliding with each other, and finally scattering across the ground.
"Holy shit!"
"What happened?"
"What went wrong?"
...While exclaiming, everyone quickly gathered around Nick, wanting to know exactly what had happened.
Nick was even more bewildered, unsure of what had gone wrong or why everything had suddenly gone out of control.
"Barney boy, what exactly happened?" Tyler, looking anxious, was the first to pat him and ask.
Nick, having recovered, shook his head and said, "I'm not sure yet. Maybe there's a problem somewhere in the system."
"We didn't find any issues during our previous tests, so why did it crash today?"
"The previous times were all simulations on the computer, along with a few small-scale formation experiments. Since we're testing so many drones in formation together today, some issues are bound to pop up," Zack explained to the anxious Tyler.
"There is only a little over a week until the exhibition opens, and the organizers require us to arrive at least three days early to prepare and set up the display. That means we have less than a week left," Tyler said, his brows tightly furrowed.
As soon as Tyler finished speaking, Nick waved his hand and said, "That's useless right now. Our top priority is to figure out exactly what went wrong.
Zack, you and I will work through the night to check the system and see where the problem lies."
Although Nick was also nervous inside, as the team leader, he had to remain calm at this moment to reassure everyone.
Zack glanced at him, then nodded and said, "Got it, I'll start right away."
Nick looked at Tyler, then called out to Terry, "Your task is also difficult. Immediately check the drones and see if there are any hardware problems.
Furthermore, the state of the drones is very unstable. I need you to ensure that the drone failure rate is controlled below 1% during our demonstration."
Although the task was challenging, seeing Nick's unquestionable gaze, Terry could only nod, accepting the task with a look of distress.
"Alright, let's move! We'll try to run the test again before dawn," Nick said, clapping his hands.