Issue 37 Unmanned Systems Technology April/May 2021 Einride next-gen Pod l Battery technology l Dive Technologies AUV-Kit l UGVs insight l Vanguard EFI/ETC vee twins l Icarus Swarms l Transponders l Sonobot 5 l IDEX 2021 report

72 In operation | Icarus Swarms Icarus’ standard product is therefore a 20 kg case containing 20 UAVs that are ready to be placed, programmed (with waypoints and altitudes) and launched in less than 20 minutes. “So far, with our users in the French special forces and other security teams, we’re finding that 20 is a good number for their operating requirements,” Lauwereins says. “Any more and it would be problematic for their missions, because they often have to get themselves and all their equipment into the limited space of a helicopter or armoured vehicle at short notice.” He adds that his team’s algorithms are also compatible with the software on the Parrot UAVs used by the US military, as well as the new variants of the Anafi to be developed by Parrot for the French military. Icarus’ swarming technique Discussions over the past several years regarding how swarming might be achieved have looked at centralised, fixed comms networks between a GCS and a group of UAVs, and various forms of decentralised ad hoc networks, in which swarms communicate and make low-level decisions internally to achieve high-level objectives. The nature of Icarus’ swarming control architecture completely avoids the use of comms however. Instead it uses intelligent embedded algorithms that predefine the full set of possible actions (including reactions to obstacles and failure modes) that each UAV might need to perform, and to streamline the end-user’s planning process through intelligent group formation-plotting. “There are many theories about how swarms will one day choose their own formations and adjust them dynamically by communicating their position, heading and objectives to each other,” Lauwereins remarks. “But as far as we’ve seen, those theories go beyond what the market is actually demanding for now – unmanned aircraft by themselves are still new to a lot of people. “And whether you’re giving a light show or in a military or civil operation, the worst-case scenario is often that one or many non-autonomous UAVs lose their data link or GNSS link, and then have to decide what they’re going to do in the absence of comms with their human operators or other vehicles. So we really need our UAVs to be smart without needing any radio comms.” It is critical therefore that before any mission begins, each UAV is embedded with algorithms to define its behaviours at critical moments. “For example, if at any point one or two UAVs become ‘lost’, owing to a failure in their GNSS receiver or a similar malfunction, they need to know how to return to the launch point,” Lauwereins explains. “The easy solution is to pre-assign a different altitude and set of inertial navigation targets in the algorithms to each one for their return route, so that they avoid collisions while returning to the same spot.” Beyond this example, however, the variables of a mission can run far wider, so Icarus’ algorithms are designed to contain failsafe behaviours covering far more combinations of events – and permutations of their scales as well as distribution among each UAV swarm – than just this. Once the mission has been planned, each UAV will be launched with its own exit path, to ensure that a safe return is possible for every one of them at any moment without collisions, and without the need for any comms with the GCS or other UAVs. April/May 2021 | Unmanned Systems Technology Parrot’s Anafi UAV is modified by adding an RTK-GNSS and an additional IMU and radio before being integrated into a swarm So far, our users in special forces are finding that 20 UAVs is a good number. Any more and it would be problematic for their missions