The findings from the research, with input from Oregon State University (OSU), are said to represent an advance toward efficiently and economically using swarms in roles including wildland firefighting, package delivery, and disaster response in urban environments. The team’s findings have been published in Field Robotics.
“We don’t see a lot of delivery drones yet in the United States, but there are companies that have been deploying them in other countries,” Julie A Adams of the OSU College of Engineering said in a statement. “It makes business sense to deploy delivery drones at a scale, but it will require a single person be responsible for very large numbers of these drones. I’m not saying our work is a final solution that shows everything is OK, but it is the first step toward getting additional data that would facilitate that kind of a system.”
The results stem from the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)’s OFFSET (Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics ) program. The organisation said the program foresees small-unit infantry using swarms comprising upwards of 250 unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or unmanned ground systems (UGSs) ‘to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments’.
During the four-year project, researchers deployed swarms of up to 250 autonomous vehicles – including multi-rotor aerial drones, and ground rovers – to gather information in so-called ‘concrete canyon’ urban surroundings where line-of-sight, satellite-based communication is impaired by buildings.
Adams was a co-principal investigator on one of two swarm system integrator teams that developed the system infrastructure and integrated the work of other teams focused on swarm tactics, swarm autonomy, human-swarm teaming, physical experimentation and virtual environments.
“The project required taking off-the-shelf technologies and building the autonomy needed for them to be deployed by a single human called the swarm commander,” said Adams, the associate director for deployed systems and policy at OSU’s Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute. “That work also required developing not just the needed systems and the software, but also the user interface for that swarm commander to allow a single human to deploy these ground and aerial systems.”
Collaborators with R&D consultancy Smart Information Flow Technologies developed a virtual reality interface called I3 that lets the commander control the swarm with high-level directions.
Adams said: “The idea is that the swarm commander can select a play to be executed and can make minor adjustments to it. The objective data from the trained swarm commanders demonstrated that a single human can deploy these systems in built environments, which has very broad implications beyond this project.”
Testing took place at multiple US Department of Defense Combined Armed Collective Training Facilities. Each multi-day field exercise introduced additional vehicles, and every 10 minutes swarm commanders provided information about their workload and how stressed or fatigued they were.
During the final field exercise, featuring over 100 vehicles, the commanders’ workload levels were also assessed through physiological sensors that fed information into an algorithm that estimates someone’s sensory channel workload levels and their overall workload.
“The swarm commanders’ workload estimate did cross the overload threshold frequently, but just for a few minutes at a time, and the commander was able to successfully complete the missions, often under challenging temperature and wind conditions,” said Adams.
Mandate sets 2030 date for use of sustainable aviation fuel
I do hope this doesn't cause costs to UK aviation to rise and lose business to those staying on fossil fuels.