DRONE STRUCTURES
January 25, 2023
I'm sure most of you have seen the drones used in sporting events, swarming together to produce a dazzling moving light show. A pretty brilliant research article by Lewis M. Pyke and Craig R. Stark stated that drone swarms typically require constant control center contact in order to function at optimal levels. So they recommended the use and development of a type of artificial intelligence, Swarm Intelligence (SI), to maintain working functionality in case the communication link gets broken. In any case, here's part of their calculations as found in their paper (cited directly below the equation).
v (t) = w v (t - 1) + c1r1(pbest - p) + c2r2 (gbest - p)
v (t) represents the velocity at timestep t
p, pbest, gbest represent the current position
w = 0.6 (Inertia)
c1 = 2 (Cognitive Factor)
c2 = 2 (Societal Factor)
r1, r2 ∈ [0,1]
Pyke LM and Stark CR (2021) Dynamic Pathfinding for a Swarm Intelligence Based UAV Control Model Using Particle Swarm Optimisation. Front. Appl. Math. Stat. 7:744955 doi: 10.3389/fams.2021.744955
Most of the calculations involved in particle swarm optimization are well beyond my current level of math, and even in the equation above I have no idea how they arrived at the values for the Cognitive & Societal Factor constants. But there are also other, more layman-friendly, articles out there that describe the movements of drones in swarm patterns as circulating within a type of grid system. Let me provide a quick analogy for this. If you've ever played the board game "Battleship®", then you're already somewhat familiar with this concept. However, instead of being limited to the two dimensions of the ship movements found in that strategy & guessing game, drone movements typically encompass the entirety of 3-D space: the X-axis (horizontal), the Y-axis (vertical), and the Z-axis (protruding or receding movements).
Although experiments with drone swarming have been around for a few years now, I'm not sure if they've been developed to their fullest potential. Several months ago, I was conceptualizing a sketch that merged two technologies together, as you can see below. What if we applied artificial intelligence in drones together with 3-D printing filaments to construct small, temporary buildings in extreme environments, such as in space or in sub-freezing temperatures? If you've read my "Artificial Intelligence and Society" article, you already know I'm opposed to using AI (or in this case SI) as a means for mass job displacement of human workers. So of course, such technology should be prohibited from replacing everyday construction workers. And the shape & form of our drones would need to develop further in order for this future concept to work… Battery life for drones in lighting displays, according to .., is currently limited to around 20 minutes, so obviously we'd have to work on maximizing the efficiency of .., as well as develop a power source that has a better weight to power ratio..
So with all the talk of flocking models, ..particle swarm theory, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and .., it's to Swallows Doesn't it make you glad that you don't have to run these type of calculations whenever you participate in a group dance session or another similar activity that requires coordinated group activities?…