The Pentagon made a quantum leap in warfare capabilities with its new technology. The defense contractor company Raytheon, with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, developed technology that allows one person to fly 130 drones during military operations.
The developers made successful tests on their new technology in both indoor and outdoor urban settings.
“OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics” (OFFSET), as they called it, is made of 130 physical drones and another 30 simulated ones. Even with “minimal training.” the operator can control the swarm, thanks to its easy handling software and hardware.
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How can a person fly 130 drones at once?
“Controlling a drone swarm changes the way an operator or group of operators think about the drones, Takeaways from this exercise help inform us of the inflection points between utility and manageability,” said Shane Clark, the principal investigator of OFFSET.
If you thought that The operator will control the swarm at a desk using a joystick, then you are wrong. In fact, that will happen with the help of a virtual reality interface. So the operator will be able to look separately through each drone.
“You can look behind the building to access a view of drone locations for example and use the virtual reality environment to test and see if your mission is viable,” Clark said.
In addition to a speech interface that will allow operators to give voice commands to the swarm. This feature will help the operator “to act quickly while maintaining situational awareness.” as Clark
