Drone Swarms as Air Defence Systems

Swarms, 2019

Swarms of network enabled drones exhibit autonomous behaviour and are pursued by several states, including to attack targets. The prospect of ‘essentially unlimited numbers’ of weaponized mini-drones has raised fears of ‘scalable weapons of mass destruction’ and lent a sense of renewed urgency to ongoing policy deliberations on ‘lethal autonomous weapons systems’. This bulletin briefly summarizes reported military advances in swarming technologies as well as recent policy commentary on the topic. It flags potential risks from the perspective of international and human security and disarmament, and suggests some areas of concern.

2021

Proof of concept of swarm flying. In this research, one drone was controlled by a person and three drones were controlled by a server. The server knows every drones location and controlled the drones based on other drones' locations. Flight code was tested on a simulator and a closed secured area. Automatic drones had only two commands which could be commanded: takeoff and land. Everything else was controlled by the server.

IEEE Access, 2023

The ability of multiple manned and unmanned aircraft systems to cooperatively engage and disable an aerial threat plays a decisive role in modern warfare scenarios. In this paper, we apply key methods to enable the so-called cooperative threat engagement capability among multiple networked agents, e.g., a swarm of drones, with combat and communication capabilities. In particular, this research combines AI-based decision-making and control techniques for a swarm of loyal wingman drones to coordinate efficient defense actions in a cooperative and autonomous manner. We apply these concepts in a defense scenario that is modeled to analyze the loyal wingman concept, which we consider an interesting testbed for cooperative decision-making and low-level control techniques. The investigated methods were implemented in a realistic 3D UAV simulator for demonstration and evaluation. INDEX TERMS Cooperative engagement capability, loyal wingman UAV, decision making, manned-unmanned teaming, sliding mode control.

Current Robotics Reports, 2021

Purpose of Review Currently, there is a large body of research on multi-agent systems addressing their different system theoretic aspects. Aerial swarms as one type of multi-agent robotic systems have recently gained huge interest due to their potential applications. However, aerial robot groups are complex multidisciplinary systems and usually research works focus on specific system aspects for particular applications. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the main motivating applications that drive the majority of research works in this field, and summarize fundamental and common algorithmic components required for their development. Recent Findings Most system demonstrations of current aerial swarms are based on simulations, some have shown experiments using few 10 s of robots in controlled indoor environment, and limited number of works have reported outdoor experiments with small number of autonomous aerial vehicles. This indicates scalability issues of current swarm systems in real world environments. This is mainly due to the limited confidence on the individual robot's localization, swarm-level relative localization, and the rate of exchanged information between the robots that is required for planning safe coordinated motions. Summary This paper summarizes the main motivating aerial swarm applications and the associated research works. In addition, the main research findings of the core elements of any aerial swarm system, state estimation and mission planning, are also presented. Finally, this paper presents a proposed abstraction of an aerial swarm system architecture that can help developers understand the main required modules of such systems.

Proceedings of the 14th ACM Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Wireless Ad Hoc, Sensor, & Ubiquitous Networks, 2017

Drones (aerial, terrestrial, marine, underwater, etc.) are more and more widely used in both civilian and military scenario. Still, they remain complex systems for which training, operation preparation and execution of effective operations require adapted tools and support. In this paper we propose such a tool, that we call Thunderbird, based on a shadow drone that is used to control and to get feedback form a drone on an effective field of operation. In this position paper we detail a number of issues that we have identified in the design of such a tool and we describe additional problems that arise when considering not only a single drone but a swarm of possibly heterogeneous drones. We also suggest some possible ways to cope with the identified issues. We eventually present a first prototype/proof of concept that we have developed.

Next Generation Drones and Modern Security Threats, 2023

Drone Cluster Technology refers to the use of multiple drones that work together in a coordinated manner to accomplish a task. This technology has a wide range of applications, including Military, Defence and Attack, aerial mapping, search and rescue operations, agricultural monitoring, and delivery services.

IAES International Journal of Robotics and Automation (IJRA), 2023

The purpose of this review is to highlight the current research on aerial robot swarms and their applications. It focuses on the system architecture and follows the current trend in aerial robotics promoting research in this field along with its impact on society. Further, it explores the dynamics as well as the flying mechanisms of a drone and sheds light on the different algorithms being used to control aerial swarms. Due to a lot of research going on in this field, we also discuss the different trends that are active and of keen interest to the researchers, including the swarm pattern formation behavior.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2018

2016

Unmanned Aerial System doctrine has been lacking, latent, or ignored as a prescribing design element in the emerging field of swarm technology. In this paper, an integrated methodology for designing a swarm unmanned aerial system (UAS) in parallel with swarm UAS mission doctrine is discussed. The structure of this methodology is derived from heuristics from the model-based systems engineering, robotics, human systems integration, biology, and computer science disciplines. The methodology provides a standard approach for designing and operating swarm UAS that seeks to meet the performance and doctrine requirements for any intended mission. 1.0 INTRODUCTION There has been an increased interest in swarm technology over the last two decades. Much of this can be attributed to the dynamic field of unmanned systems technology, which has been rapidly developing in both the government and private sector. Unmanned system technology has expanded from physically hazardous, highaltitude, extende...

2018

OVERWHELMING THE SAA SYSTEM OF DELIVERY UAVS BY DRONE SWARMING. As the Internet continues to replace the brick-and-mortar store as the main place for purchasing goods, web-based companies are looking for ways to reduce the cost of delivering those goods. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, is one delivery method that is increasingly being used. These UAVs can be programmed with delivery routes and destinations and can complete the job while requiring limited intervention from human controllers. Sense and Avoidance (SAA) systems have recently been incorporated into these UAVs so that they can detect objects in their flight path, reroute the UAV accordingly and operate even more autonomously. This is vital for delivery UAVs that are used within urban areas where the threat of objects along the flight path is the greatest. As a result of the low-cost and low-labor nature, UAV delivery service is expected to become a critical part of emerging smart city infrastructure. However, the use of SAA-capable UAVs may create another potential attack surface for cyber threats which may significantly hinder the broader adoption of UAV delivery services if not properly and sufficiently addressed. This research intends to provide a systematic study of this potential cyber challenge by uncovering the limitations of both UAV's SAA systems and the operational procedure of UAV delivery services that could be exploited in an attempt to disrupt orderly delivery services.