As night falls, hundreds or even thousands of drones rise into the air at the same time, forming patterns, words, and animated images in the sky. When many people see a drone light show for the first time, one question comes to mind:

Do these drones already have artificial intelligence, just like the machines in science fiction films?

Formation drones do have a certain level of intelligent capability. But their "intelligence" is not the same as that of truly intelligent drones that can autonomously understand their environment and re-plan missions.

01

Flying Automatically Does Not Mean Thinking

Many people's idea of intelligent drones often comes from films: drones can search for targets on their own, automatically avoid obstacles, judge routes, and even adapt in real time like a flock of birds.

In reality, formation drones used in performances are more like a group of aerial dancers that have been precisely rehearsed. Before the official show, engineers have already completed:

· flight path design

· time synchronization

· formation changes

· altitude control

· speed planning

These action scripts are then uploaded to each drone. After the performance begins, the drones execute their missions according to the preset rhythm. They can fly automatically, maintain formation, and complete transitions, but most of the time they are not "thinking" on the spot. So, in essence, formation drones are not fully autonomous AI. They are a highly automated multi-drone coordination system.

02

The Real Challenge Is Keeping Hundreds of Aircraft from Colliding

Although formation drones do not think like humans, their technical difficulty should never be underestimated. The real challenge is enabling hundreds of drones to take off at the same time, change formations, maintain spacing, and fly safely and steadily throughout the entire process.

Imagine asking hundreds of people to run across a playground at the same time while constantly changing formations, keeping distance, and making no mistakes. That alone is already extremely complex.

Drone formations do something similar every day. Behind this capability is swarm coordination technology. In simple terms, each drone needs to know clearly:

· where it is

· who is nearby

· how fast it should fly

· what distance it should maintain

· when to switch formations

· when to execute the next action

When all of this single-drone information is centrally scheduled by the system, the whole fleet seems to share one common brain. For this reason, although formation drones are not the same as fully autonomous drones, they already possess a typical form of "collaborative intelligence."

03

The Real Brain Is Usually Hidden in the Ground System

Many viewers only see the drones in the sky, while rarely seeing the system behind them.

A large-scale drone show usually requires a complete ground control system, including high-precision positioning, communication links, flight-control scheduling, real-time monitoring, mission dispatch, and exception handling modules.

These modules continuously tell each drone whether its position has shifted, whether its speed is normal, whether its altitude is stable, whether the formation is accurate, and whether adjustments are needed.

Therefore, a drone light show is essentially not just "hundreds of aircraft flying in the sky." It is a large distributed robotic system operating in coordination.

This is also one of the directions AMOV Lab has long focused on.

In AMOV Lab's view, the value of robot swarms lies not only in performances, but also in research validation, teaching and training, and real industrial applications. Light shows are simply the most visible form for the general public. What is truly imaginative is enabling drones, unmanned ground vehicles, sensors, communication systems, simulation platforms, and ground-station systems to work together as a complete whole, so that swarm capabilities can be put into practice.

04

From Looking Impressive to Being Useful: Robot Swarms Are Moving Into Real-World Scenarios

If drone light shows solve the question of "how to make many aircraft fly neatly," then true robot swarms must go one step further and solve this question:

How can multiple robots work together to complete a mission? For example, in a complex area, multiple drones can search for targets separately; unmanned ground vehicles can carry out close-range confirmation on the ground; aerial platforms can provide wide-area perception, while ground platforms perform close-range operations. Together, the system forms air-ground collaboration.

This is no longer just a performance. It is robotic coordination capability designed for real missions.

Around this direction, AMOV Lab has built a robot swarm solution covering typical tasks such as swarm formation, collaborative search, and air-ground collaboration. It can be used for research and teaching, algorithm validation, secondary development, and exploration of industrial applications.

For swarm formation, the system supports multi-robot formation control and formation switching, and can be used for drone-formation teaching, multi-machine collaborative control, and algorithm validation.

For collaborative search, the system can combine target areas, perception data, and multi-machine task allocation so that multiple robots jointly complete area coverage, target recognition, and status feedback, improving search efficiency.

For air-ground collaboration, drones are responsible for aerial reconnaissance, area coverage, and target positioning, while unmanned ground vehicles handle close-range ground approach, path planning, and mission confirmation. This creates a closed loop between aerial perception and ground execution.

05

Making Swarms Practical Is Not Just a Matter of Buying More Drones

Many people think a robot swarm simply means "buying more drones." But truly getting a swarm to run involves far more than hardware quantity.

It requires a complete platform system:

There must be small drones suitable for indoor formation and algorithm validation, as well as multirotor platforms suitable for outdoor missions, aerial perception, and application R&D;

There must be unmanned ground vehicles suitable for indoor mapping and multi-vehicle collaboration validation, as well as ground platforms suitable for complex outdoor environments and air-ground collaborative missions. At the same time, sensor payloads such as LiDAR, depth cameras, and dual-sensor gimbals are needed, together with RTK, UWB, motion-capture positioning, and self-organizing mesh communication systems, to ensure stable robot operation in different environments.

At the software level, a swarm system also needs mission control, status monitoring, formation control, simulation validation, and secondary-development interfaces.

AMOV Lab's robot swarm solution is not limited to providing a single device. Built around "hardware platforms + sensor payloads + positioning and communication + open-source software + simulation systems + training support," it helps teams quickly build robot swarm platforms that are verifiable, teachable, developable, and scalable.

Whether a university laboratory is conducting multi-robot algorithm research, an institution is building practical training courses for unmanned systems, or an industrial customer is validating tasks such as air-ground collaboration, regional inspection, and collaborative search, this platform provides a fast starting point.

06

Future Outlook

The leading role in the future belongs to robot swarms. No matter how powerful a single drone becomes, it still has capability limits. But when drones, unmanned ground vehicles, and various intelligent devices work together, they can form a stronger collective capability.

In future scenarios such as disaster rescue, inspection and security, emergency search, and logistics transportation, the systems that deliver real value may no longer be a single robot, but an entire robot swarm working in coordination.

So, do formation drones count as intelligent drones?

One way to understand it is this: they already have collaborative intelligence, but there is still room to evolve before they become fully autonomous AI drones.

And that path of evolution is exactly what makes robot swarm technology so worth looking forward to.

Next time you see those small aircraft changing patterns neatly in the night sky, perhaps you will see them differently: what they are performing is not only a light show, but also a glimpse into the future era of robot swarms.