Laboratory for Autonomous Flying Robots at the Berlin Institute of Technology achieved a world first last year by transporting a load using a trio of autonomous helicopters, marking a step forward in robot co-operation. (You can watch a – video of the feat here.)
Many researchers believe that the future lies with swarms of robots working collaboratively. They point to the success of social insects – ants have been going for over a hundred million years showing the advantages of a robust, decentralized group. Working together, small insects can accomplish large tasks, like building thirty-foot termite mounds.
According to the Lab's press release (original in German translated with the help of Babelfish):
Helicopters have long been used for load transport... [But t]he largest transport helicopters can transport up to approx. 20 tons... This has motivated us to examine over the last four years whether it would not be possible for several helicopters to couple and thus be able to transport larger articles....
Load transport with two coupled manually steered manned helicopters has been examined at least in two studies (accomplished in England and the USA)
by the military. [But] due to the enormous load...[this] is not suitable for field use.
Thus one began to work on a system for automatic control from several coupled helicopters. A goal was a universal control system, with which the number of helicopters as a function of the mass of the load and the pay load of the existing helicopters can be varied.
The
Berlin team suggest that up to eight helicopters could be used to shift a load using an automated control system. Loads that can currently only be hauled Chinooks and the like could be carried by groups of smaller helicopters, or multiple large helicopters could carry outsize payloads where needed.
However, the first applications may be much smaller. The German team are participating in the AWARE project
– "Platform for Autonomous self-deploying and operation of Wireless sensor-actuator networks cooperating with AeRial objEcts" - which is building the technology for a network of ground sensors which will be able to deploy itself with the aid of robot helicopters. No doubt
DANGER ROOM readers can suggest many more uses, both on and off the battlefield, for a swarm of co-operative robocopter transports.
