Friday’s Olympic performance broke that record. Impressive as they are, Intel has had to overcome several technical challenges to achieve these choreographed feats. Natalie Cheung, the drone light show business director at Intel, said the key is to maintain enough distance between the drones to keep them from crashing into each other. Engineers and developers at Intel created their own software to control the drones using wireless communication and global positioning systems. First, operators input the images and colors they want the drones to create. The software then automatically calculates the number of drones needed, their position and amount of time it takes for them to form the image. Afterward, a single pilot can monitor and control the drones’ performance using a single laptop. GPS sensors and cameras installed on the drones allow them to detect the movements of other drones and execute the performance without colliding with each other. “Thanks to the 5G network that KT is testing [at the Olympics], we were able to control more than 1,000 drones in real time,” an Intel official said.