Drone Swarm

Published on 19 May 2022. Written by Dineshkumar E

Drone swarm is a way towards the coordination of many drones as a single system. Multi-robot systems own greater adaptability, performance, and safety than individual robots, a crew of collaborative robots can do a particular task much quicker and execute tasks beyond the limits. Swarm robots can perform a complex task easily with the help of many specialized simple robots. Drone Swarm is the mixed technology of swarm robotics and UAV systems.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms used in indoors for formation flight and collaborative behaviours, outdoors to show swarming algorithms and in the media for artistic light shows. Swarms of flying robots are assuring choice to ground-based robots while exploring in indoor conditions with advantages such as increased acceleration, agility and the ability to fly over barriers.

Project Description

Motion Capture (Mo-Cap): This system is used to detect the position of drones and to navigate them in a controlled environment. Motion capturing is the process of tracking the movement of objects or people. Optical systems use data captured from image sensors to triangulate the 3D position of a subject. Effective optical systems triangulate locations by illuminating one LED at a time very quickly or by many LEDs using the software to identify drones by their relative positions.

Ground Control System: The signals from the motion capturing cameras are processed by the GCS, and the drones are controlled based on these signals transmitted from the GCS.

Transmitter and Receiver: Radio waves with a frequency of 2.4 GHz are used to send and receive signals between the GCS and Drones.

Inertial Measurement Unit: It is used to make the drones afloat despite changing winds. An IMU is a particular variety of sensor that measures angular motion, force and sometimes magnetic field. IMUs are made of a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope, which would be counted a 6-axis IMU. IMU can also include an added 3-axis magnetometer, which would be counted a 9-axis IMU. The term IMU relates to just the sensor, yet IMUs is usually paired with sensor merging software, which links data from many sensors to provide measures of orientation and heading.

Drones: Drones (Quadrotors) equipped with microcontrollers. The function of the microcontroller is to maintain the position of drone based on the signal from the GCS. In microcontroller signals from the IMU and the GCS are processed, based on this the RPM of the motors are varied to control the drone.

Applications

Drone swarms can be used for construction, it can be able to build faster, better and cheaper.
For entertainment purposes like light shows, theatrical performance, etc.
In agriculture, Swarm of small Drones is used to watch the crop status and the presence of weeds.

Conclusion

Swarm intelligence is inspired by nature, especially from biological systems like ant colonies, bird flocking and animal herding. By merging swarm and UAV technology together we can reach the unreached.

Kit required to develop Drone Swarm:

Technologies you will learn by working on Drone Swarm:

Drone Swarm

Any Questions?

Subscribe for more project ideas