DARPA OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) researchers recently tested swarms of autonomous air and ground vehicles at the Leschi Town Combined Arms Collective Training Facility (CACTF), located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington. The Leschi Town field experiment is the fourth of six planned experiments for the OFFSET program, which seeks to develop large-scale teams of collaborative autonomous systems capable of supporting ground forces operating in urban environments.
Two Swarm Systems Integrators – Northrop Grumman Mission Systems and Raytheon BBN Technologies – are creating swarm system architectures, advanced interfaces, and virtual and physical swarm testbeds for OFFSET. The Swarm System Integrators tested their autonomous platforms – comprising of ground vehicles, multirotor and fixed-wing aircraft – in a multi-stage, interactive scenario to locate and secure multiple simulated items of interest relevant to the urban operational scenario.
How the swarm commanders chose to approach the test series was dependent on a given swarm’s capabilities as well as the strategies and tactics available at their disposal. Using real-time swarm data and scenario analysis provided by the DARPA experimentation team after each run, the Swarm Systems Integrators extracted insights from each mission and generated new strategies to improve their following test runs, in addition to future technology development.
As OFFSET field experiments continue, Swarm Systems Integrators will look for opportunities to incorporate novel swarming technologies, including those developed by Swarm Sprinters, into their own respective architectures. During the Leschi Town experiment, Swarm Sprinters, including Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; Michigan Tech Research Institute; University of Buffalo; and Northwestern University, demonstrated component technologies designed to enhance the Swarm Systems Integrators’ capabilities for mission execution.
Timothy Chung, OFFSET program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO), stated that the Swarm Systems Integrators have been steadily improving their capabilities, each approaching the testing scenarios in unique ways. Being able to test large-scale swarms in complex urban environments will allow them to extract new insights into the best ways to use a swarm, especially as their field tests increase in size, complexity, and duration.
Previous field experiments took place at the U.S. Army’s Camp Roberts in Paso Robles, California; the Selby Combined Arms Collective Training Facility in Fort Benning, Georgia; and the Combined Arms Collective Training Facility at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, Mississippi. Future field experiments are targeted at six-month intervals.
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