Imagine a cluster of drones swarming above a dense thicket of trees, eyeing its way through unfamiliar topography to locate a missing person amid unpredictable weather.
Each drone has its own complex communication and computing capabilities. But as that weather starts to sour against the clock, the rescue mission requires group optimization, not a single drone with its own problem to solve.
The team driving the drones needs to act quickly to determine how many drones to deploy, how they will communicate, which trajectory to take and how they will adapt to challenges such as wind. To be most effective, that swarm must formulate a problem that accounts for flight constraints, solve that problem to determine the route and then rely on a controller to stay on the same path.
Read more about Assistant Professor James Fairbanks’ research on decision-making and coordination in autonomous drone swarms.
Story by Dave Shlenker for The Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering