China’s Ehang broke the world drone display record – but the aerial bots were out of sync
Guangzhou-based Ehang deployed a fleet of 1,374 drones at a Labour Day show in Xi’an to beat the 1,218 drones flown by Intel in February at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games
China’s Ehang on Tuesday broke the world record for the largest number of drones used at an airborne show in the northwestern city of Xi’an, but witnessed an epic fail that marred its latest achievement.
The Guangzhou-based company set a new Guinness World Record for the “most number of unmanned aerial vehicles airborne simultaneously”, deploying 1,374 drones above Xi’an’s 600-year-old city wall on a 13-minute flight that spread for more than a kilometre.
The show’s live broadcast footage, however, showed about half of the drones in flight was in disarray.
That resulted in a failure to complete the Chinese characters for “Running Xi’an”, “New Era” and other phrases as part of the Ehang programme.
The performance also did not complete “1374”, representing the number of drones in the show, and the date “5.1”.
Ehang’s Egret drones soared about 260 metres above Xi’an’s city wall, programmed to create a hovering display that measured 1,200 metres in length and 100 metres deep, according to a company statement posted on Chinese microblogging site Weibo after the show.