RoboticSwarm — Prompt-to-choreography for drone light shows

Pipeline

How it works

The same engine powers the Studio and the API. Every show is a portable script — not a vendor-locked project file.

01 — PLAN

Plan the show

An LLM planner designs the formation sequence, colors, and narrative arc from your sentence — or your uploaded logo and music. A deterministic parser stands in if the model is unavailable; the plan never skips the safety pipeline either way.

02 — SOLVE

Solve the choreography

Formations become keyframes of 3D positions in meters (ENU frame), drones are assigned slots to minimize crossings, and the full timeline is sampled against velocity/acceleration limits and swept for transition-time collisions — with automatic repair.

03 — EXPORT

Export a flight script

Output is versioned JSON — per-drone waypoints, timing, colors, and a computed safety block — exportable today as per-drone CSV, Finale 3D VVIZ, or a Skybrush-compatible CSV bundle.

Developers

Show API

Send a prompt, get back a complete choreography script — then validate it, generate waiver-support docs, and export it, all over JSON. Anonymous requests are rate-limited; waitlist members can issue a free API key.

POST /api/v1/shows

Field	Type	Description
`prompt`	string	Show description in plain English. Required.
`drones`	int	Fleet size, 12–500. Default 100 (or parsed from the prompt).
`duration`	int	Show length in seconds, 20–600. Default 60.

POST /api/v1/shows/validate — safety report for any script, against a venue profile

POST /api/v1/shows/waiver-packet — FAA 107.35 waiver-support documentation

POST /api/v1/shows/export — CSV / VVIZ / Skybrush bundle

POST /api/v1/shares — mint a show permalink

POST /api/v1/keys — free API key for waitlist members

GET /api/v1/formations — list supported formations

GET /api/v1/openapi.json — full OpenAPI 3.1 spec

Response (abridged)

{
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "meta": { "name": "\"LOVE\" Show", "prompt": "...", "planner": "llm" },
  "drones": 120,
  "duration_s": 50,
  "coordinate_system": "ENU, meters, origin at show center",
  "keyframes": [
    {
      "t": 0,
      "formation": "launch",
      "color": "#f4f7ff",
      "positions": [[-22.0, -18.0, 8.0], …one per drone…]
    },
    …star → heart → text:LOVE → burst → land…
  ],
  "safety": {
    "min_separation_m": 2.4,
    "max_altitude_m": 112.3,
    "bounding_box_m": [96.0, 54.2, 112.3],
    "geofence": "cylinder r=120m, ceiling 120m AGL"
  }
}

Safety first

Safety is the output, not a checkbox.

Every script this engine emits carries its own safety envelope — computed, not asserted. Regulators now scrutinize show-file integrity as much as pilots, and we think the design layer is where safety has to start.

SEP-01 Every formation passes an iterative separation solver enforcing a ≥1.5 m bubble — and the whole timeline is swept at 10 Hz for transition-time conflicts, with automatic trajectory repair when drones would cross too close.

KIN-02 Trajectories are sampled and checked against velocity and acceleration limits, altitude stays capped at 118 m AGL under the 120 m FAA Part 107 ceiling, and an endurance model flags shows that would outrun safe battery reserve.

GEO-04 Venue profiles validate a script against a real site — geofence polygon, crowd standoff lines, altitude ceiling — not generic defaults. POST /shows/validate reports violations for any script, ours or not.

DOC-05 One call assembles an FAA 14 CFR 107.35 waiver-support packet: operation summary, containment analysis, failure-mode assumptions, and the full validation results. Documentation, not legal advice.

Research

Where this fits

Today's drone show tooling is desktop GUIs and Blender plugins. Exactly one vendor ships AI prompt-to-show design — locked inside its proprietary drone ecosystem. Nobody else offers an open, hardware-agnostic API. That gap is what RoboticSwarm is built to fill.

Project	Type	What it does
Skybrush	Open source	The de-facto open-source show stack (GPLv3, tested to 5,000 drones): Studio designs in Blender, Live runs the fleet on ArduCopter. Its `.skyc` file is the closest thing to an open show format.
Drone Show Software	Commercial	SPH Engineering's publicly purchasable suite — design, simulation, fleet control. Free "Lite" tier up to 20 drones; paid tiers by fleet size. Design remains GUI/Blender-driven.
Verge Aero	Commercial	Vertically integrated drones + Design Studio + Console. Shipped the industry's first AI prompt-to-show design (2025, ISE Best of Show) — but closed ecosystem, no public API, no export to other fleets.
SkyStage	Commercial	Self-serve design marketplace ("a show in 10 minutes") with a formation library and exports to DSS/Skybrush fleets. Template-driven, not prompt-driven.
Crazyswarm2	Open source	ROS 2 research stack for large indoor Crazyflie swarms — the academic workhorse, not a show product. SwarmGPT and FlockGPT (LLM choreography papers) build on this world.
RoboticSwarm	This site	Prompt- and API-first choreography with timeline-wide collision validation, venue-profile safety checks, and waiver-support docs — exporting to open formats (Skybrush CSV bundle, VVIZ, per-drone CSV) today. Design-tool-free.

Choreograph the night sky with a sentence.

Show Studio