Disney patents IRL lightsabers that deflect laser beams

They won't slice through metal, but they will appear to fire back blaster bolts

Thursday 18 August 2016 03:48 EDT

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Creating some sort of working lightsaber has been the dream of merchandisers, crowdfunders and garage engineers for many years, and Disney hasn’t given up the dream either.

This week it filed a patent presumably to be implemented at the 14-acre Star Wars Land for an ‘Audience Interaction Projection System’, that involves drones and the bouncing back of beams of late.

There is no specific mention of lightsabers but, I mean, just take a look at the diagram filed with the patent:

The patent explains the technology thus (don’t worry, a TL:DR will follow):

An entertainment environment has a user with a faux light saber that interacts with a drone flying through the air or operated with hidden rods to appear as if its flying through the air. The faux light saber has LEDs attached thereto to provide IR light to the drone. As an LED is turned on, an invisible light sensor built into the drone captures an image of the field of view with a bright spot at the position of the activated LED. A visible light source built into the drone then projects light through particulate matter toward the faux light saber. As a result, the uses is provided with the illusion that the faux light saber has deflected a laser beam. Multiple LEDs can be activated in sequence at various times to give user the impression that the movement by the users of the faux light saber is deflecting multiple laser beams.

Essentially, drones will send down light (most likely visible through fog) and then the lightsabers send it back, as if deflecting a laser bolt fired by a blaster. They can't slice through steel of course, but could still be pretty fun.

It all sounds a bit grand scale for a backyard toy, so it’s a fairly safe bet the technology will be used at Disney’s California and Florida Star Wars parks, which are currently under construction.

A rep for Disney Parks would only tell io9: “We continuously innovate and file hundreds of patents that may or may not have any business unit application. We have nothing to announce about this at this time.”

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