The Pentagon has successfully tested the swarm of drones 103

The us army is developing a fundamentally new kind of armed forces — teams of unmanned vehicles with swarm intelligence. In October 2016, successfully tested the world's largest swarm microdrones consisting of 103 vehicles Perdix, stated on the website of the Ministry of defense.

Swarm intelligence involves the coordinated action of a large number of agents (bodow) that locally interact with each other and the environment. Although each Boyd follows the basic rules, but in aggregate the system is swarm intelligence demonstrates an extremely complex joint behavior. It operates virtually as a single organism.

For example, in the final episode of the latest season of "Black mirror" showed the typical swarm intelligence system of the robotic bees, which had to replace the extinct population of living bees. So, having a simple command to get to the goal in the inner ear of the girl on the results of the vote on Twitter people recognized the most hated girl for a day, robotic bees showed different ways to achieve it. Some tried to break through the window, others through the door, others through the vent. It's not because bees are smart and resourceful. Quite the contrary, they acted solely primitive, following a basic set of simple rules. They tried all the options, stupid tychas in all the cracks. It well illustrates the principle of complex system behavior based on simple rules.



The movable sculpture of robopon in the office of the developer. Photo: series "Black mirror"

As a swarm of robotic bees has received one task, created the impression that it is led by an invisible force. Although in reality each drone was Autonomous and was guided by a simple set of basic rules.

By the way, in the development of robopon of "Black mirror" the filmmakers helped engineers at Harvard University.

Drones the Ministry of defence the United States is much less advanced than in the movies. And when the military called them with the prefix "micro", it can only cause a smile. Maybe the dictionary should bring a new definition to the word "micro"?



Microtron Perdix

Technical characteristics:
Propellers: 6.6 cm
Case: 16.5 cm
Wingspan: 30,0 cm
Weight: 290 g
Flight time: 20 minutes
Maximum speed: more than 40-60 nodes (74-111 km/h)

Perdix — in Greek mythology, the nephew and apprentice of Daedalus.

Swarm the drone system developed by the Office of strategic options (Strategic Capabilities Office, SCO) under the Ministry of defense, in collaboration with the aviation systems Command U.S. Navy (Naval Air Systems Command). The devices were launched into the air with three decked fighter-bombers F/A-18E/F "Super hornet".

During the tests a group of drones has demonstrated some unique features of swarm formation, including collective decision-making, adaptive change order on the fly and "samsuiluna" group.

Each of boidov in the swarm system the us army liaised with other boidae. Here there is no leader or commander, allowing Roy to successfully survive the loss of individual boidov and to continue coordinated action.

According to the military leadership, these groups of cheap disposable boidov able to efficiently perform complex missions, which is now used large, expensive machines. Besides, there is no need for constant management by the person. People can step back from the work of such stand-alone systems. In the absence of the person they act much more effectively, as I make decisions faster and react quickly to external factors.


Perdix — cheap, lightweight drone, the body of which is printed on a 3D printer. UAVs were originally developed by students at mit, and later adapted for military use by scientists and engineers from Lincoln laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT Lincoln Laboratory). Work continued in 2013. Since then, software and hardware configuration Perdix constantly improved: now it is the 6th generation of drones. In the future upgrade of the system will continue.

Tests proved the operability of the drones at a wind speed of 0.6 Mach and a temperature of -10°C and shock due to the shooting infrared traps with fighters.

The characteristics Perdix stated that the drone for reconnaissance missions but the application of swarm intelligence significantly expands the functionality of this device. It is easy to imagine a swarm of these drones, armed with explosive ammunition (e.g. grenades), performing combat missions.

The use of armed drones on the battlefield is intended to reduce the loss in manpower, but it creates additional risks. In February 2016, the experts published a report that warned of increased risk of erroneous attacks when using Autonomous weapons: "It can happen because of the actions of hackers manipulating the behavior of the drone by the enemy, unexpected interactions with the environment or a simple failure and error in software, writes Paul Sarre (Paul Scharre) from the Center for a new American security, one of the authors of the report. — Moreover, with the increasing complexity of the systems becomes increasingly difficult to verify the system behavior under all conditions; the number of potential interactions between the system and the environment are just too great."

Human Rights Watch calls for the signing of an international agreement, which preemptively ban the development, production and use of Autonomous weapons.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/284474/