Forty-eight drones fell from the sky soon after takeoff during a special drone show at the Taiwan Lantern Festival on Saturday night due to electromagnetic interference, the Taichung City Scenic Area Administration said yesterday.
The fallen drones, which were later located at the Taichung City Hou-Zong Senior High School, did not cause any injuries, the administration said.
The show, which was one of the highlights of the festival, featured 800 drones portraying images in the night sky, from a girl drinking bubble tea and the Houfeng bicycle lane to the city’s name written in English.
Photo: Ou Su-mei, Taipei Times
The team controlling the drones detected the interference before the show and tried to resolve the problem, which delayed the show by about five minutes, administration Director Liao Wei-chih (廖偉志) said.
“However, we found that the interference continued after the show began, which caused some of the drones to fall from the sky soon after takeoff,” Liang said in an interview with reporters.
The administration suspects that the interference was caused by other drones flying in the area, Liao said.
It was also possible that some people were using other radio-frequency devices near the venue, which caused interference, he said.
As the show was to be presented again at the festival’s closing ceremony last night if weather permitted, the Taichung City Government said that it asked telecommunication police to help identify the origin of any electromagnetic interference.
The contractor in charge of the show estimated that the crash would cause a loss of about NT$3 million (US$98,674).
Some drone operators told local Chinese-language media that interference could happen if the frequency used by the drones exceeds the frequency assigned to them, which might have caused part of the frequency used by the drones to overlap with that used by other radio-frequency devices.
Strong winds might also have caused the drones to collide and crash, they said.
Others said that the interference could be deliberately produced by drone operators in protest against the government’s new regulations, which are scheduled to take effect on March 31.
Taichung only allows a limited number of fly zones for drone operators, which they said was unreasonable.
Telecommunications police said they can track the origin of unknown signals with detector guns and the National Communications Commission’s telecommunications signal monitoring vehicles.
Such vehicles were used to catch people who tried to cheat in government-administered exams using electronic gadgets, they said.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS