Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Assistant Professor Timothy Chung met with members of NPS’ Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL) during a field exercise at Camp Roberts, Aug. 27. Members of ARSENL flew 50 autonomous UAVs breaking their previous record of 30, set just five weeks ago.
“I’m very proud of reaching our goal of successfully flying 50 autonomous UAVs simultaneously,” said Chung.
The 50 UAVs were launched and flown autonomously in two “sub-swarms” of 25 UAVs each and guided using ARSENL-developed swarm operator interfaces. The UAVs performed basic leader-follower cooperative behaviors and exchanged information amongst themselves via wireless links.
“This project came from the notion that quantity is a quality,” said Chung. “It’s like trying to play a game of tennis against an entire 5th grade class. If they were are all lobbing tennis balls across the court, it would be very hard to defend against them.”
In the past, each aircraft would be operated by a single person, which makes for a very large footprint with many moving parts.
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