(Source : unmannedsystemstechnology.com – Mike Ball) – DARPA OFFSET Drone Swarm Program Demonstrates Urban Raid
DARPA has announced that it has performed its third field experiment within its OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program, which aims to develop the capability for swarms of up to 250 autonomous vehicles to collaborate in providing critical information and situational awareness to small military ground units in constrained urban environments.
In this experiment, swarms of autonomous UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles) were deployed to demonstrate a raid in an urban area, and were programmed to seek multiple simulated items of interest located in the buildings at the Combined Arms Collective Training Facility (CACTF) at the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Mississippi. (…)
Partners working with DARPA on the OFFSET program fall into two categories: Swarm Systems Integrators and Swarm Sprinters. The integrators, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon BBN, create OFFSET architectures, interfaces, and their respective Swarm Tactics Exchanges, which house tools to help performers design tactics by composing collective behaviors, algorithms, and existing swarm tactics. (…)
During this field experiment, Swarm Sprinters Charles River Analytics, Case Western University, and Northwestern University demonstrated the ability to integrate novel interactions and interface modalities for enhanced human-swarm teaming, which allows the human operator to use interactions such as gestures or haptic touch to direct the swarm. (…)
READ FULL ARTICLE >>> https://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2020/01/darpa-offset-drone-swarm-program-demonstrates-urban-raid/
Photo Credit : DARPA OFFSET urban raid demo, as published in ibid
