Illuminations using LightBenders

This talk presents LightBenders, a hardware and software platform for mid-air, indoor illumination of line drawings, letterforms, and animated visual effects using a swarm of LightBenders. A LightBender is a drone equipped with servo-actuated rod joints and a dense, addressable LED strip, giving it configurable per-LED color and brightness, rod segment angles, and 3D position. We describe the system's three software contributions: (1) algorithms and heuristics that estimate the minimum number of LightBenders needed to render a given drawing or letterform, stagger swarm formations to mitigate downwash, and generate Swarm Flight and Lighting (SFL) files for execution; (2) a Blender add-on that lets users register LightBenders, author graphics and animations, and deploy illuminations through one-click functions; and (3) SVG import, via the Blender add-on or a standalone LB-Author tool, enabling direct illumination from vector graphics. Building on this pipeline, we present seven visual effects designed for LightBender swarms, each parameterizing one or more of the platform's configurable properties as a function of time. These effects are implemented within the same Blender add-on, empowering artists to design, visualize, and edit choreographed lighting effects for arbitrary words and line drawings before deployment. Finally, we report results from an IRB-approved human subject study (n = 21) evaluating the perceptual impact of LightBender misalignment. Results show the system's 10.1 mm maximum misalignment is perceptually acceptable across tested illuminations, with a median quality rating of 8 on a 0-10 scale.