When drones light up the night, will they replace fireworks?

Eric D. Lawrence
Detroit Free Press

In the night sky near Interstate 75 in northern Oakland County, 60 drones moved with precision.

Their preprogrammed electric dance lit the early evening October darkness with a changing, blending palette of red, green and blue as they outlined many forms — a rotating cube, a tornado ripping a roof from a house, a pair of eyes gazing.

The 16-minute unmanned aircraft system show north of Detroit was not advertised, but it drew enough of a crowd of cars that drone operators felt compelled to shut the gate of the field managed by a Radio Control flying club known as the Holly Cloud Hoppers.

The shapes and maneuvers, accompanied by the swarm's hive-like buzz, were not designed to entertain on this night but rather to allow a Michigan company, Firefly Drone Shows, to try out new ideas, some of which may be used for an upcoming performance.

Ryan Sigmon, who owns Lake Orion-based Firefly with Kyle Dorosz, compared the LED light display to something seen on a computer screen.

Firefly Drone Shows from Lake Orion uses multiple drones to swarm creating evening light shows. They are doing a test in Holly for an upcoming show on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018.

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"Just think of them as pixels. Every drone has a very specific place to be at a specific time,” he said.

But try not thinking of them as drones, Sigmon advised. Instead, think of how an artist would see them.

"Look at it like, I’ve got a bunch of dots in the sky, what can I do to it? That’s when the real magic starts to happen there," Sigmon said.

That magic is what is prompting interest in the kinds of drone shows Firefly and some other companies can create. Last month, Firefly produced a show for the 100th anniversary of the start of production at the Ford Rouge Plant. Drones were used to spell out "HAPPY B-DAY!" in the sky and even create vehicles, including an F-150 pickup, which appeared to drive over rocky terrain.

The kind of evening celebration that might have once been the exclusive domain of fireworks is expanding to include the increasing technological prowess of drones. Firefly, which got the necessary waivers to operate multiple drones at night from the Federal Aviation Administration just this year, demonstrated a piece of the potential market this summer when Sigmon and Dorosz got a call from a resort community in Arizona.

Extremely dry conditions had forced a cancellation of the community's Fourth of July fireworks show. With only a few days' notice, Sigmon, Dorosz and crew drove west and pulled off a drone show in between their other scheduled events.

“We were able to use drones to solve an actual problem that someone was having, which was super neat ... and just the fact that we were able to pull it off in four days was just the cherry on top,” said Dorosz.

Firefly did not provide specific price information, but Sigmon said pricing is "typically in line with a large firework display."

Good enough for Lady Gaga

Drone shows have been used in a number of high-profile events in the last few years, including during the Super Bowl LI halftime show with Lady Gaga in 2017 and earlier this year for the Winter Olympics in South Korea. The Olympics performance featured more than 1,200 drones in a pretaped show that memorably created a snowboarder in action. 

Intel, which is considered a pioneer in drone entertainment; Firefly; and Great Lakes Drone Co., which is based in southwest Michigan, are considered the main operators in the lighted drone shows, but anyone hoping to develop similar nighttime shows in the U.S. could seek the necessary Federal Aviation Administration waivers.

The FAA said it has issued 38 waivers allowing operations of multiple drones by a single pilot, and more than 1,900 waivers allowing operations at night. The three companies have both types of waivers.

Firefly Drone Shows founder Kyle Dorosz prepares to launch 60 drones in a field near Holly on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 to test for a upcoming show.

The need to issue waivers to allow such operations, however, might provide a false confidence in the safety of the technology, according to one expert, Ella Atkins, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Michigan.

"The fact that it’s a waiver means it's not an established process," Atkins said. "If you think about it, you're getting exceptions or waivers that really amounts to the FAA acknowledging that they don’t yet have a process to carefully evaluate the safety of every drone that asks them to operate so they instead review paperwork that is really light on the technical details."

Atkins has worked extensively with drones as a faculty adviser for Michigan's student drone team, helping to push for a netted test facility at the university and serving on a National Academies committee related to drone research, according to the university. She is also a private pilot.

Atkins said risks that a drone may fall from the sky remain, and those risks, in terms of equipment, software and operational practices "where the drone can be absolutely trusted to fly in a crowd” have not been carefully examined.

“We can go out and show that a drone is really impressive at following a prescribed path, which is what a lot of these light shows are doing. People have very meticulously created what they believe is an artistic pattern for the group of drones to follow, which is normally great ... but if something goes wrong, maybe it’s not so great," Atkins said.

Drone injury lawsuit

Something did go wrong for a Los Angeles woman on June 30.

Before a fireworks display at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Monika Nourmand was hit in the face by a drone operated by Great Lakes Drone Co. owner Matt Quinn, according to a lawsuit and her attorney, who noted that Nourmand did not know a drone show had been planned. 

Nourmand and her husband sued Quinn and his company, both of which have denied responsibility, according to a published report, as well as Caesars, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The collision led to an emergency room visit for Nourmand, who was treated for a range of injuries, including subretinal bleeding, cuts around her eye, a fracture of the orbital floor, blurriness and vision loss, according to Nourmand's attorney, Robert Glassman, who said she is now at risk of early onset glaucoma.

Why the drone hit Nourmand in the face is unclear, but Glassman said something obviously went wrong, and he believes his law firm can demonstrate negligence.

"When you’re operating a flying machine like that, you need to take appropriate and proper precautions that in the event of a failure, and here I think it’s clear something failed but there were no protocols in place to ensure that it wouldn’t fall and hit one of the spectators below," Glassman said.

He dismissed the idea that a waiver would shield the operators from liability.

“Even if there is a waiver to the federal regulations, you can’t operate a drone that falls out of the sky and strikes someone in the face without being held accountable. I mean the waiver is not a waiver in the event that there is an injury or that there’s negligence," Glassman said.

Firefly Drone Shows Ryan Sigmon, 28, of West Bloomfield holds one of the 60 proprietary drones before it is launched in a field near Holly on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 to test for a upcoming show.

The FAA, however, said "based on the investigation, there appeared to be no violation of existing federal aviation regulations.”

Quinn, the owner of Great Lakes Drone Co., declined to discuss the incident, citing the lawsuit, but said “all FAA investigations are open. I'm not too worried about anything."

Quinn predicted that while accidents may happen, they will be small in number compared with the total number of drone operators. He pointed to a recent TechCrunch article written by a journalist who said a small Intel drone dropped on his head during the unveiling of a new Audi electric vehicle. The writer noted that he was not hurt.

But Quinn emphasized that drones hold tremendous promise and will be expanding in many arenas, such as package delivery, in coming years.

"The drone industry is new and emerging, and it's going to be amazing to see what's going to happen in the future as all of us come together and get better at what we do," Quinn said. “There's no manual out there that says this is how you do a drone light show."

Great Lakes has been involved in shows at state fairs in New York and Michigan, an air show in Wisconsin and a show with fireworks on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Quinn said his company was scheduled for about 50 shows this year and is booked for about twice as many next year. 

Natalie Pavlatos, managing associate of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an advocacy group, noted that FAA regulations opened the door to commercial drone operations in 2016.

"Since then, over 110,000 commercial small (unmanned aircraft systems) have been registered with the FAA, and they expect more than 450,000 UAS to be flying for commercial purposes by 2022," Pavlatos wrote in an email.

Drone regulations

The regulations stipulate that drones must fly under 400 feet, within a visual line of site, one at a time and during the day, she said.

"However, the FAA recognized the need for this rule to be flexible and created a waiver process to allow for expanded operations on a case-by-case basis, including flights at night or multiple drones at once (both important for drone light shows)," Pavlatos said.

A waiver is also available for operators who want to fly over people.

Firefly Drone Shows Ryan Sigmon, 28, of West Bloomfield helps to position 60 drones in a field near Holly on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 to test for a upcoming show.

In the lead-up to the October test show in Oakland County, Firefly's Sigmon described the preparations taken, such as running simulations for safety purposes. The drones would be flying at speeds up to 10 mph and with enough separation at all times.

Sigmon described the individual units as a "very stripped down, basic drone … built just for the purpose of light shows" from a proprietary design, "whatever we could build that could fly the longest and have the brightest light."

Sigmon described how he and Dorosz, who's "been winning trophies flying planes ever since he was a little kid," started the company. 

Two years ago, they were marveling at the work Intel was doing with drones, pondering what it would take to fly multiple drones. They began building prototypes in Dorosz's basement.

Now Firefly is "booked just about every other weekend," doing shows across the country.

“It’s growing into something that’s even bigger than we expected it to be," Sigmon said.

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence