[02-07-2017] WTAG – Craig Peterson
Joined Jim Polito today to talk a little bit about the Super Bowl half-time show, where not only Lady Gaga was showcased, but also synchronized drones by Intel called “Shooting Stars”.
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Related articles:
The Super Bowl halftime show drones weren’t flying live
http://craigpeterson.com/news/the-super-bowl-halftime-show-drones-werent-flying-live/11610
Intel unveils a drone made for aerial light shows
http://craigpeterson.com/news/intel-unveils-a-drone-made-for-aerial-light-shows/11613
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Transcript
WTAG – 2017-02-07_Superbowl-Technology
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing date: 02/07/2017
Super Bowl Technology
Jim Polito: This man, Craig Peterson, has intimate knowledge of Lady Gaga. Don’t get the wrong idea. He has intimate knowledge of the drone display that went on during Lady Gaga’s performance which, by the way, Craig Peterson says the beginning of it was not exactly live and he’s going to explain why. Joining us now, our Tech Talk guru. The smartest man in the room no matter what room he’s in, Craig Peterson. Good morning sir.
Craig Peterson: Hey good morning. You know I’m not a big football fan or sports fan at all.
Jim: Well you’re Canadian, you’re a hockey fan. You can’t help it.
Craig: Well, is there a hockey in the CFL of course. Real football. But wow, what a game. This thing was incredible.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: And I’m glad that Lady Gaga got the Patriots’ act back together up.
Jim: I think they inspired her. She inspired them, yeah.
Craig: She inspired them. Yeah, exactly. You know in this day and age of course, we’re using technology for everything. And we have been, you know, complained before about people lip-synching and not singing live. And I get it. You know, you’re a performer. You’re out there. You’re in mixed weather conditions. It’s hard to keep that voice going. And so, you know, sometimes it does make sense to pre-record it. Well, in the beginning of Lady Gaga’s performance when she was up on what looked like the top of the stadium and we had flag and the drones behind her. That was entirely pre-recorded.
Jim: Ok. But was she actually on the top of the stadium when they recorded it?
Craig: You know that we’re not sure of. She was obviously at some place where maybe the drones were behind her. But did you notice that… there are 2 things I noticed immediately while I was watching this.
Jim: Ok.
Craig: One was, when she looked back at the drones, you’ll notice she really didn’t look back at the drones. She just turned her head sideways.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: And the drones were behind her?
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: Right? So that was clue number 1 to me saying hey wait a minute now. I think that she was videotaped separately from the drones.
Jim: And it would’ve in front of a green screen.
Craig: Most likely.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: Absolutely. And then the other thing that I noticed was there was a jet airplane that was passing by. That was on, you know, at the far side of the drones. But there’s a 33 mile no flying zone.
Jim: Oh yeah. Right. For the game. You’re gonna have the vice president in the building. It would be a rich target for terrorists. Yeah, you’re right. The Super Bowl. Sure.
Craig: Yeah. Kinda like the Black Friday movie. Remember back in the, when was that 70s, right?
Jim: Yeah. Yup.
Craig: Yeah. So I saw those things I started to get a little bit suspicious. And then it came out afterwards. What had really happened was they did indeed videotape those drones the week before the Super Bowl. And the reason they did that is the FAA said you’re not flying those stinking drones over the stadium when there’s tens of thousands of people in there.
Jim: We don’t need no stinking drones.
Craig: Yeah, exactly. Because even if there’s nothing malicious going on, the drones can fall out of the sky, you know, reach terminal velocity depending on how high they are, and really cause some serious injuries. Well the technology that they used, it was called Shooting Star, and Intel has been licensing it to Disney.
Jim: Wow.
Craig: And Disney apparently has been using it in some of their theme park shows.
Jim: So this is incredible. It’s not computer generated in the sense that you know, you can do anything in a movie now. These drones, each had an individual LED light on them that could change whatever color you want it to do. Whatever effect. And they were basically informing these formations, I know I’m being redundant but they were putting these formations and then the lights would move to… I mean, it was incredible. They even did the Pepsi logo coz Pepsi sponsors the half-time show.
Craig: Yeah. It was a really big deal. This was difficult to do. There’s 300 of these drones in the air. They had pre-programmed what they wanted these drones to do. And as you mentioned here earlier in your show, it was controlled by a single operator.
Jim: Wow.
Craig: And this is a whole new business for Intel.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: You know they’re looking at it saying hey if we don’t get our act together, Apple right now is rumored to be putting in their next MacBook Pro even more non-Intel computer chips.
Jim: Oh boy.
Craig: Phones don’t have many Intel processors. So Intel’s kinda scrambling to figure out, ok what can they do? They are right now the best manufacturer of the Intel-type computer chips but it looks like they’re trying for different businesses. These came off really well. They obviously got a lot of success from it.
Jim: Oh yeah.
Craig: Frankly these little quadricopters are gonna start showing up all over the place.
Jim: It’s incredible, yeah, I mean look. We used to think it was cool, Craig, when we saw one of them doing stuff and getting video. Now, them doing formations and other things, I mean when you begin to think now what the other applications are of this, it’s incredible. It truly is incredible. I mean search and rescue. All of these types of things. I mean it’s already like you can have one drone up. How about the same way that you use this Intel system to control them to go into a formation, how about you do this? You give them the GPS and you say here’s the grid. All of you guys go out like flies, you know. And our swarm of bees cover this entire area that can come back in minutes. And cover an entire area for search.
Craig: Well I think that’d just be fantastic. The military’s already exploring the uses of these things. And the military is putting what it called microbombs on the drones. And the idea is if you wanna take someone out you can have facial recognition technology in the drones. And in their control systems so they get one person and then they basically just drop teeny tiny bombs by the dozens or hundreds on that person to kill them.
Jim: Or the drones fire into the person.
Craig: Right. Yeah. Exactly. So you think about the drones being almost the size of a bumblebee.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: And a swarm of those, hundreds of them coming at you can be a problem. But as you pointed out, I love it Jim. I love your thinking here. This would be fantastic. You think about our aging population.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: People who are getting lost.
Jim: Oh yeah.
Craig: Who are wandering off. Yeah.
Jim: Yeah, you have someone. You have, look, it is very dangerous to go up into, you know, mountains and look for someone who’s lost. And sending one drone with one person is like ok we can cover more ground. But if you could have them controlled and they would be communicating with each other and you could form a grid of the terrain, you could cover all of that terrain in no time at all.
Craig: Ah, very quickly, and you know, 10 years I was a volunteer paramedic. And I can’t tell you how many times an elderly person wandered off in the middle of winter and thank God, we usually found them. But, you know, the Molly Bish all the way through Rapper grandma wandering off. We could save lives with something like this.
Jim: We could.
Craig: Definitely.
Jim: It’s incredible. And Craig, I appreciate your time now. Look folks, we just scratched the surface. Craig sent me so much other stuff and he can send it to you too. He won’t annoy you. He will send it to you every week right after the segment, if you text my name, Jim, to this number…
Craig: 855-385-5553.
Jim: Thank you Craig. Standard data and text rates apply. Craig, excellent segment. Looking forward to talking with you next week buddy.
Craig: Thanks Jim. Take care.
Jim: You too. Alright. So do that you get the text right after the show. And you’d get all that information plus more. He doesn’t annoy you, he doesn’t take advantage of your number.
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