Tokyo
Last week, something happened at night in Tokyo that Anttu Koski from Tampere was not allowed to talk about.
In all silence, 1,824 drones rose into the Tokyo night sky.
Or in silence and in silence - The drone of a drone resembles a bit of a huge swarm of wasps.
Koski was involved in the drone performance seen at the opening of the Tokyo Olympics, in which the planes formed a huge blue ball in the sky.
The performance was well received by the world.
It was practiced a couple of nights before the opening - that's why Koskik was in Tokyo on a night stand.
The drones rose into the air from a nearby baseball stadium.
- It was a secret, which was a bit awkward to keep.
You can’t really practice a big drone show in the middle of Tokyo without anyone noticing.
Friday was then show time itself.
In the United States alone, nearly 17 million people watched the opening of the Tokyo Olympics.
Anttu Koski took a picture of himself as the background for the Tokyo Olympic droneshow.
Photo: Anttu Koski
Anttu Koski, 41, originally from Ruovesi, works as a software engineer at Intel, whose team made the inaugural aircraft presentation.
Intel is a multinational technology company.
The job is to be responsible for the software that is inside the Drones.
In his previous career, Koski has worked in the development of tablet and phone cameras.
For the past four years, he has been part of a drone team that has been able to fly in places such as the Super Bowl, Las Vegas and the Apollo 11 anniversary.
The drone performance on site was amazing.
Photo: EDGAR SU / Reuters
While the performance at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics was underway, Koski watched that outsiders did not enter the area where the drones were operated.
He also oversaw that the drones flew as planned.
- The majority of the work had already been done before the h-moment.
The drones used in the performance are designed for a light show.
They carry bright LED lights that can display over four billion different colors.
One director controls the drone series from the control computer, Koski says.
The Tokyo drone performance, which charmed the world, relied heavily on Finnish expertise.
Flying nearly two thousand drones would seem to require a huge crowd, but at the opening there were only a dozen people handling the drones.
- There were seven of us Finns there.
The flight routes had been pre-programmed as always, so things happened automatically in the show itself.
Koski says that the performance was designed in collaboration with the designers responsible for the creative side of the Olympics.
First, they made 3D models, which were then mapped into drone animations.
The software determines the flight plan for each drone and ensures that routes do not collide.
- I knew from the exercises that everything was going well, but it was still exciting when you knew that possibly even billions of people would watch.
Photo: Anttu Koski