Welcome to Disney’s wonderful world of drones.
Disney Enterprises, the merchandising arm for the entertainment conglomerate that owns the ABC Network, has filed three patents for drone-powered entertainment strategies, including using unmanned flying vehicles to move giant puppets.
If it gets its way, the company known for Mickey Mouse will seek to use a variety of drone — different from the kind the military uses to kill people — as a warm and fuzzy machine to propel Tinker Bell.
Of course, Disney isn’t the first company to see dollar signs in unmanned aerial vehicles, which are operated from the ground.
Last year, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos made headlines when he said he wants to use drones to deliver packages.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has invested in drones as part of his effort to bring the Internet to remote parts of the world. And Google recently acquired drone company Titan Aerospace to collect high-resolution earth images, a tool that could enhance its map-making business.
Disney’s plans are purely theatrical. All three patents, which were published last week with the US Patents and Trademark Office, are for a new type of “aerial display” or air show.
One patent, for example, would shoot colored light streams from drones flying in the sky. Another patent would use the drones to fly “flexible projection screens” in the air that would reflect light being projected onto them.
A third patent would use the drones to move large puppets supported by “tether lines.”
Disney’s patents reference “Symphony of Lights” — an enormous LED light show in Hong Kong that uses dozens of buildings on both sides of the Victoria Harbor — as a potential goal for drone use. The show has attracted millions of visitors to the island off the southern coast of China.
But the large-scale light shows are currently limited to projections onto big buildings or water or fireworks, Disney said in the patents.
Drones would allow a large aerial display “over a sports stadium or theme park where no or few buildings may be present.”