UCF Researchers Work On Spy Drone Flocks

A flock of migratory birds can find its way over wide areas of the world. An army of ants working together can devour a large animal. Borrowing from their behavior, two researchers at the University of Central Florida are working to enable droves of small, unmanned aerial vehicles to operate together in an intelligent, coordinated manner, scoping out enemy troops in combat zones. The research is being conducted by College of Engineering and Computer Science professors Mubarak Shah and Niels da Vitoria Lobo, who recently received a grant furthering efforts to program unmanned drones to collect more useful battlefield intelligence. The $210,600 grant from the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program will be used to buy three unmanned planes with 6-foot wingspans and three helicopters with 48-inch-long bodies, plus cameras, communications gear and computers to control the aircraft. The primary beneficiary would be U.S. military forces in combat areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where unmanned aerial vehicles, known as UAVs, use small but powerful cameras to create maps of battle areas and track the ground movements of enemy troops and vehicles.