And how is this a good thing?
Oregon State University
Research involving Oregon State University has shown that a "swarm" of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.
The findings represent a big step toward efficiently and
economically using swarms in a range of roles from wildland firefighting to
package delivery to disaster response in urban environments.
"We don't see a lot of delivery drones yet in the
United States, but there are companies that have been deploying them in other
countries," said Julie A. Adams of the OSU College of Engineering.
"It makes business sense to deploy delivery drones at a scale, but it will require a single person be responsible for very large numbers of these drones. I'm not saying our work is a final solution that shows everything is OK, but it is the first step toward getting additional data that would facilitate that kind of a system."
The results, published in Field Robotics, stem
from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency' program known as OFFSET,
short for Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics.
Adams was part of a group that received an OFFSET grant
in 2017.
During the course of the four-year project, researchers
deployed swarms of up to 250 autonomous vehicles -- multi-rotor aerial drones,
and ground rovers -- able to gather information in "concrete canyon"
urban surroundings where line-of-sight, satellite-based communication is
impaired by buildings.
The information the swarms collect during their missions
at military urban training sites have the potential to help keep U.S. troops
and civilians more safe.
Adams was a co-principal investigator on one of two swarm
system integrator teams that developed the system infrastructure and integrated
the work of other teams focused on swarm tactics, swarm autonomy, human-swarm
teaming, physical experimentation and virtual environments.
"The project required taking off-the-shelf
technologies and building the autonomy needed for them to be deployed by a
single human called the swarm commander," said Adams, the associate
director for deployed systems and policy at OSU's Collaborative Robotics and
Intelligent Systems Institute.
"That work also required developing not just the
needed systems and the software, but also the user interface for that swarm
commander to allow a single human to deploy these ground and aerial
systems."
Collaborators with Smart Information Flow Technologies
developed a virtual reality interface called I3 that lets the commander control
the swarm with high-level directions.
"The commanders weren't physically driving each
individual vehicle, because if you're deploying that many vehicles, they can't
-- a single human can't do that," Adams said.
"The idea is that the swarm commander can select a
play to be executed and can make minor adjustments to it, like a quarterback
would in the NFL. The objective data from the trained swarm commanders
demonstrated that a single human can deploy these systems in built
environments, which has very broad implications beyond this project."
Testing took place at multiple Department of Defense
Combined Armed Collective Training Facilities.
Each multiday field exercise introduced additional
vehicles, and every 10 minutes swarm commanders provided information about
their workload and how stressed or fatigued they were.
During the final field exercise, featuring more than 100
vehicles, the commanders' workload levels were also assessed through
physiological sensors that fed information into an algorithm that estimates
someone's sensory channel workload levels and their overall workload.
"The swarm commanders' workload estimate did cross the overload threshold frequently, but just for a few minutes at a time, and the commander was able to successfully complete the missions, often under challenging temperature and wind conditions," Adams said.