We are leading a project to demonstrate that efficient and effective operation of unmanned swarm systems can bring a profound impact to the military arena through developing UAV swarm architecture technology.

Cranfield University is coordinator of a consortium developing technology which will enable heterogeneous UAVs to operate as a swarm in a defence environment..

Our researchers will be developing key technology enabling unmanned, heterogeneous swarms to operate.

We are developing key techniques to enable swarm UAVs to self-decide optimal task allocation and resource management; to use cooperative guidance as well as creating a robust sensor network enabling the UAVs to operate independently.

As part of the project, these techniques will be integrated within the platforms and tested and validated using empirical simulation studies and small scale experiments.

Our main tasks are developments of mobile tasking and information fusion (behaviour monitoring) and demonstrating the swarm technologies to be developed.

In collaboration with our consortium partners, we defined demonstration scenarios, system/subsystem requirements, innovations and performance metrics of the solutions to be developed in the project. A technical review was also undertaken, showing that that achieving the proposed innovations is challenging. An initial feasibility studies confirmed the proposed approach could enable the proposed innovations and bring a profound impact to the military arena including:

  • Obtaining real-time, relevant situational awareness information before making contact;
  • Helping commanders to lead appropriate decision making;
  • Reducing risk to the mission and operation.
scenario definition
Scenario definition