Raytheon, DARPA developing technology to control drone swarms

WASHINGTON — Raytheon is developing technology for soldiers to control unmanned vehicle swarms with voice and gesture commands, according to a company news release.

The technology is being developed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics, or OFFSET, program.

Raytheon’s BBN Technologies division is developing a visual interface that allows for “drag and drop” creation and manipulation of swarm tactics, a game-based simulator to evaluate those tactics, and a physical swarm test bed to perform live tactics evaluation.

DARPA has also awarded contracts to Northrop Grumman Mission Systems and Lockheed Martin for the OFFSET program. These Phase 1 contracts are part of the program’s “swarm sprints” and an effort to enable rapid development by leveraging and combining emerging swarm technology. Swarm sprints focus on five key areas: swarm tactics, swarm autonomy, human-swarm teaming, virtual environment and physical test bed.

Raytheon’s swarming technology will be applied by DARPA in unmanned systems meant for multiple domains, not only unmanned aerial systems.

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“We imagine seeing swarm tactics where you’ll be conducting reconnaissance with a swarm of air and ground robots. Or identifying ingress and egress points, or perhaps identifying novel ways to construct a perimeter of an area of operations,” Timothy Chung, DARPA’s OFFSET program manager, said in a video about the first sprint.

The United States is playing catch-up in developing swarming technology. Chinese companies are setting records in unmanned system swarming. In June 2017, the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation set the record for fixed-wing UAS, flying 119 systems in a swarm; and in December 2017, researchers from the Chinese state-run National University of Defense Technology used more than two dozen UAS to complete a simulated reconnaissance mission.

Also in December 2017, Chinese firm Ehang set the world record for the largest swarm ever deployed, using 1,180 UAS in a performance closing the Global Fortune Forum in Guangzhou.

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Swarming technology has purportedly already been used in combat. The Russian Ministry of Defence claims its ground forces were attacked by a drone swarm in January 2018.

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