This ain’t easy, folks. And the simulation / real time display of what is being considered is kinda cool. Remember, this is all under computer control – humans aren’t controlling them:
Weaving through dense woods is a challenge for even the smartest drone. Trying to do it as part of a swarm is orders of magnitude harder. But researchers have now cracked the code.
The approach builds on a single-drone navigation technique, which rapidly maps routes around obstacles as they come within view using only the drone’s onboard camera and computer. The team, which was also behind the earlier strategy, adapted it for swarms by getting drones to broadcast their trajectories over a wireless network. That allowed the other drones to choose routes that avoided collisions while staying in formation.
The technique, published last month on the arXiv preprint server, requires very little computational power and works even if the wireless connection is spotty. In real-world tests, a three-drone swarm was able to move quickly through a forest of randomly spaced trees.
Pretty cool. Just hope that SkyNet isn’t watching too carefully.
(H/T: Science Mag)
