A week ago, the aforementioned team of researchers launched 50 drone into the air and controlled all of them by a single operator. With Zephyr drones that are custom craft made from hobbyist components, cost around $2,000 (€1,773) a piece and connected to each other using Wi-Fi.
“To our knowledge, this is a world record for the number of UAVs under single operator control, by quite a long way,” says project lead Kevin Jones.
These drones were operated in mid-air with an algorithm that moves all the drone and were used only in simulations.
“For larger flying wings the hand-launch process posed a significant risk to the hand launching it,” says Jones.
The team aims to develop complex, automated swarming patterns that allows many crafts to flew in the air without multiple operators.
“Most of the swarming operations are things like ‘follow-me’ mode, where one or more UAVs follow a leader around the sky,” says project lead Kevin Jones.
These kind of drone technology can be used for search and rescue operations in future.
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