Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Student Teams Compete in Service Academies Swarm Challenge – with GTRI Assistance
November 6, 2017
• Atlanta, GA
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Researchers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) provided support to student teams competing in the DARPA Service Academies Swarm Challenge. The event was held in California in April 2017.
What does the future of air-to-air combat sound like? At this point, it could sound very much like a swarm of angry bees.
That’s how researcher Michael Day described the recent DARPA Service Academies Swarm Challenge, which pitted mixed groups of up to 25 highly autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on a side against one another in a next-generation version of the traditional “capture the flag” game. The friendly live-fly competition involved student teams from the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy, and the U.S. Naval Academy, with each team developing and testing their own innovative offensive and defensive tactics to conduct mock swarm-on-swarm battles.
Day, a research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), co-led the support efforts required to stage the competition, working with the teams to help them operate the swarms, which included fixed-wing, propeller-driven Marcus UAV Zephyr aircraft and DJI Flame Wheel quadcopters. GTRI coached the teams and shared its simulation software to help the competitors develop tactics for both protecting their own space and invading another team’s base. Warren Lee, branch head for GTRI’s Unmanned Flight Operations, co-led the project with Day.
The competition was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has a history of fostering competition to help advance cutting-edge technology. In addition to GTRI, the event was supported by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR). It was held in April 2017 at Camp Roberts, a California Army National Guard facility.
The vehicles were adapted from foam-wing radio-control …
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