Bedfordshire autonomy company Blue Bear Systems Research has demonstrated a 20 drone swarm collaborating out of sight.

BlueBear-20-drone-swarm

The heterogenous swarm consisted of five different types and sizes of fixed wing drones carrying six different types of payload from five different companies.

Linking them together was Blue Bear’s technology.

Payloads and payload support came from Plextek DTS, IQHQ, Airbus, RFEL, Durham University and Blue Bear.

“The drones flew simultaneous BVLOS [beyond visual line-of-sight] cooperative tasks, with Blue Bear collaborative autonomy, ensuring they all contributed to overall mission goals,” said Blue Bear.

The swarm was commanded by three operators through Blue Bear’s ‘mobile mission command system’ with artificial intelligence running on a number of drones in the swarm to locally process sensor data so that only relevant data was sent back to the ground, and to prevent collisions and identify nearby aircraft outside the swarm.

“Demonstrating BVLOS operations of a 20-drone swarm shows how far we have come in the 18 months this project has been running,” said Blue Bear MD Ian Williams-Wynn. “I am so proud of the whole team who have put a phenomenal amount of effort in to deliver the UK’s most complex autonomous air vehicle trial ever.”

Building up to the 20 vehicle swarm over two weeks of trials, more that 220 sorties of 10 to 14 aircraft were flow. “The trials concluded with a multi-vehicle ‘button click’ to launch simultaneous take off and mission deployment of four Ghost UAS in 30 knot winds,” said the company.

What did the drones actually do?

Electronics Weekly asked, and was told ‘it was mostly classified’.

The work was received £2.5m funding through DASA’s ‘Many drones make light work’ programme within DSTL’s autonomy programme.