This is a beautiful short film of Loic Bruni, accompanied down a hillside by what looks like a UFO:
(No video embed showing? Here’s a link).
It is, in fact, a wholly identified object, in the form of a drone with LED lights on the bottom. Details are a little scant, but a behind the scenes video (below) reveals that it’s an 800 watt, watercooled LED array on a gimbal. Hat off to them for DIYing something that works while making a massive amount of heat. The LEDs are very similar to the ones used in this 90,000 lumen flashlight experiment.
(Can’t see a video? Follow this link).
The light was trained on Loic by a pilot rather than software doing it automatically, so I’m afraid there’s a way to go before you can take something like this riding yourself.
Loic also talks about the challenges of riding like this. This kind of light may reveal drops offs much more thoroughly than your typical bar/helmet light combo, but the moving shadows can play tricks on your mind, and the drone can easily end up not quite pointing the right way. You can also see a few spots in the making of film where they had extra lights on the trail, as there’s no way a light from above can punch through dense foliage.
LEDs, batteries and drones have come on a very long way in a decade, and particularly in the last year with this, Casey Neistat getting carried around by one, and just a couple of weeks ago, someone kind of base jumping from a drone. The silly thing is, all of this tech is now in reach of enthusiastic (and to be fair, quite well heeled) DIYers. We currently seem to be poking at the limits of what drones can do until we have even better lights and power though; a drone like this can’t have a particularly long runtime.
How long until something like it shows up on Kickstarter with a load of grand promises though?
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The rides would be short but spectacular!