Challenges
DRONEAB, a Swedish drone service company, aims to deliver professional drone light shows – a growing segment in the creative and event industry. To achieve this, the company needs a reliable solution for controlling drone swarms, ensuring safety, scalability, and compliance with Swedish regulations.
The challenge was to identify suitable digital tools and hardware platforms for designing and executing synchronized drone formations, while minimizing development costs and technical risks. DRONEAB sought guidance on workflow design, hardware selection, and integration strategies to create a foundation for future commercial operations.
Solutions
Aero EDIH supported DRONEAB, through RISE, with a concept evaluation package that included analysis of digital solutions, comparison of existing providers, and conceptual design of software and hardware components. The implementation focused on testing Skybrush Studio in combination with Blender for creating and simulating drone light show formations. Initial shapes and animations were designed in Blender, exported to Skybrush, and refined into flight-ready trajectories. These were adapted for the RISE Drone System, ensuring compatibility with the Drone Safety Service (DSS) for execution and monitoring.
Practical tests confirmed that the system could interpret and run generated templates with stable performance. The validated workflow demonstrates that DRONEAB can leverage existing open-source and commercial tools rather than building a proprietary system from scratch, reducing investment needs while maintaining creative flexibility.
Results and Benefits
The project successfully established a cost-efficient and practical workflow for producing drone light show templates. By integrating Skybrush Studio and Blender with the RISE Drone System and DSS, DRONEAB demonstrated reliable flight path generation and execution under simulated conditions.
This approach lowers technical risk and accelerates time-to-market by avoiding the complexity of developing a proprietary toolchain. The results position DRONEAB to attract partners and funding by presenting a credible roadmap for delivering professional drone light shows in Sweden.
Furthermore, the project outlined a clear path for future development, including a low-cost prototype platform based on Ardupilot, Pixhawk Cube Orange, and NVIDIA boards for AI applications, combined with 4G connectivity and RTK positioning. These steps will enable DRONEAB to validate core technologies and scale operations efficiently. The findings also emphasize the importance of regulatory alignment for safety and advertising approvals, ensuring that technical innovation is matched with compliance.
Overall, the project strengthens DRONEAB’s competitive position in a growing market by combining creative flexibility with robust technical foundations.
Perceived Social and Economic Impact
Drone light shows represent a sustainable and innovative alternative to traditional fireworks, reducing environmental impact while enabling creative, programmable displays. By developing a scalable solution for drone swarms, DRONEAB can open new opportunities in the cultural and creative economy, attract tourism, and support event organizers in delivering safe and visually striking experiences. The project also contributes to Sweden’s position as a leader in drone innovation, fostering collaboration between industry, research, and regulatory bodies.
Lessons Learned
The project highlighted the value of leveraging open-source and commercial tools to reduce development costs and risks. Simulation and workflow validation using Skybrush and Blender proved essential for ensuring reliable performance before investing in hardware.
The experience showed that regulatory considerations must be integrated early in the design process to avoid delays in operational deployment. Future efforts should focus on refining prototype platforms, validating communication and positioning technologies, and building partnerships for funding and testing. Avoiding proprietary development in favor of modular, scalable solutions emerged as a key success factor for accelerating market entry.
“The collaboration has inspired me to continue with the project. Getting help with the start-up was incredibly important to see the potential in the start-up. I would love to collaborate more to really get the project off the ground,” says Simon Svensson, Drone Operator, DRONEAB.
“Drone swarms used for drone light shows are in the forefront of large-scale use of collaborative autonomous systems. But the challenges are many, ranging from drone hardware, capable communication, software for control, decentralized autonomy, and of course regulation and flight permits. DRONEAB has taken substantial steps in the Aero EDIH-funded project, both in the design and implementation of hardware and software. We are all looking forward to seeing the inspiring drone light shows of tomorrow,” says Rasmus Lundqvist, Senior Researcher, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.
