Tech company Raytheon Intelligence & Space recently demonstrated its integrated swarm technology, showcasing how one operator controlled 130 physical drone platforms and 30 simulated drone platforms — otherwise known as a swarm — at the fifth OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics, or OFFSET program, organized by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The drone swarm exercise, which was conducted both indoors and outdoors in an urban setting, was accomplished using both commercial off-the-shelf and custom-built hardware and software to ensure swarm autonomy. Additionally, Raytheon created a library of tactic building blocks for accomplishing mission objectives, according to the company.

Source: Raytheon

“Our software is smart enough to assign drones with the right capabilities to the appropriate set of tasks,” the researchers said. “For example, if the task is to surveil a building, multiple drones will be dispatched with each surveilling portions of the building. The software considers each platform’s sensor capabilities, and tasks drones with downward facing cameras to surveil the roof.”

Once deployed, the drones collaborate to understand what parts of a building have already been surveilled and what gaps exist. According to the researchers, the drones can then independently determine how to fill those gaps.

To improve human-swarm interfaces, the Raytheon team devised a virtual reality (VR) interface to work in conjunction with traditional camera views, taking feeds from all the swarm assets to fashion an interactive, virtual view of the environment.

“You can look behind the building to access a view of drone locations for example and use the virtual reality environment to test and see if your mission is viable. We also developed a speech interface with the operationally deployed Tactical Assault Kit, or TAK, integration capability that enables the operator to act quickly while maintaining situational awareness over many systems simultaneously,” said principal investigator Shane Clark..

In the near future, the team is expected to demonstrate its swarm capabilities during Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment 2022, hosted by the Army Maneuver Battle Lab.