Firefly drones ping pong at Intel CES keynote.
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Watch drone ping pong at Intel’s CES keynote

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

LAS VEGAS — Brian Krzanich, chief executive of Intel, gave a keynote speech at the 2015 International CES with a lot of gravitas.

He announced a plan to invest $300 million in diversity programs for widening the talent base in the tech and gaming industries. But his speech at the largest U.S. tech trade show also had its lighter moments.

In a demo of intelligent systems, Krzanich brought out a few Firefly drones from Ascending Technologies. Those drones have auto-pilot intelligence built into their systems so that they will avoid contact with humans or other objects.

One consequence of this was a demo of “drone ping pong,” where humans could nudge the drones in a certain direction by manipulating their collision-avoidance systems. The result was kind of funny, as you can see in the video below.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.