This is for sure done programmatically, as you might've guessed. And I'd guess they've built a software that models these animations and treats each drone as a node in a plot and then drones move independent of other drones since their routes are already plotted for them by the software.

So yes engineering wise this is amazing, both software and hardware, but the concept is not that complex.

Think of it as SwarmTouch but without the human "puppeteering" the drones ..

https://www.hackster.io/news/swarmtouch-lets-one-person-cont...