Unmanned Aircraft Clustered via Bluetooth

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Essex are using Linux and tiny embedded computer modules to build fleets of unmanned aircraft that fly in flocking formations like birds, while performing parallel, distributed computing tasks using Bluetooth-connected Linux clustering software. The Gridswarm project includes model trainers that can fly 120mph, while a parallel Ultraswarm project uses co-axial helicopters. A prototype of the later is believed to the world's smallest flying web server. The aircraft will run Linux on embedded computing modules from Gumstix."

Comments

Cooooooool.

[mrseigen]

I wonder if my municipality will take offense to flying sorties over to my neighbours' yard to steal beer out of his cooler.

Re:Cooooooool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait for the first BT virus for this one. That's when you'll see the real sorties flying through your neighborhood.

There's competition?

[GrouchoMarx]

A prototype of the later is believed to the world's smallest flying web server.

There's competition for that title? Just how many flying web servers are there? (IIS boxes falling out of high office windows after being thrown do not count.)

Re:There's competition?

[roseblood]

You know, I wonder WHY does one NEED a flying webserver that's small? If you've got to dish out websites from something that flies why not park a high-altitude blimp up at, oh..say, 50,000 feet and beam down the internet from there? Or... why not park a box full of anetna, electronics, bateries, and solar cells into orbit and do the same from there?

If you need a cluster of machines to work in paralell for greater number-crunching power, why not by a big server rack and throw in a bunch of 1U sized machines?

I mean, it's cool for the "wow, check this out" factor....but...real life aplications? Massively Paralell UAVs of DOOM?

Re:There's competition?

[Cryptacool]

Real-life applications is probably going to be something like smart sensor networks, you strap a small sensor to each little plane, send it out, tell them to flock together and have maybe one slight larger plane lagging behind which sends all the data back (power requirements for satelite communication and all). a lot harder to shoot down and a lot cheaper (and easier) to replace if it does get shot down.

Re:There's competition?

[Doc Ruby]

Because a flock of small, redundant machines is more reliable than a single one that fails all at once. And more scalable, especially in smaller increments. And more adaptable to multiple simultaneous tasks, as the real world often demands. And possibly cheaper to produce. The same architecture and economics that have multiplied smaller, cheaper networked machines on the ground is also compelling in the air - maybe more so, given the extra risks.

Oh, and the MPUDs you mention are also a much better way to get DoD funding than Blimps of Doom (which are also getting funded, I believe).

Re:There's competition?

[zerbot]

Yes, I see great applications in public safety. There are traffic speed sensors on the highways, and a sudden slowdown is often the first indicator of an accident. There are cameras but they don't cover end-to-end. Nest one of these every few miles and you can launch to investigate traffic slowdowns or confirmed accidents. Pipe the video to emergency response and they can dispatch exactly what resources are needed and paramedics can get a heads up on the kinds of injuries they are likely to be dealing with.

Call 911 and get an automatic dispatch of one to your location, arriving within 30 seconds in an urban location. Gives police and fire a heads up on what they will be facing when they arrive a few minutes later. Use them to monitor views of fires that can't be seen from the ground.

Re:There's competition?

[sentientbeing]

A prototype of the later is believed to the world's smallest flying web server.

Support: 'The sites gonna be down for a while, the servers crashed.'

User: 'Dos attack or something?'

Support: 'No. It crashed literally.....into a tree'

Re:There's competition?

[surprise_audit]

Given that there's a limit to the amount of cpu power that can fit into any given size of airplane, the flying cluster can have much higher "brainpower" than a single vehicle. If nothing else, it should allow the cluster to more easily recognise objects, threats, etc without having to refer back to an operator.

And as you say, there's builtin redundancy, so that maybe the cluster could decide to risk a member by letting it peek around or over an object while the main group stays safe. Also, members could be "dropped off" to act as communication relays if necessary. And then there's the attraction of having multiple eyes viewing the target from different directions...

Uh oh.

[Knnniggit]

Well, there goes the neighborhood...

Oh great, both at once

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf clust... I mean... imagine if you ran linux on... I mean... ARRGH!

MY BRAIN CAN'T COPE!

Re:Oh great, both at once

[lordofthechia]

Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of small craft that track down and eliminate slashdot poster's that reference beowulf clusters?

Add a way for them to deal death by dispensing scalding grits and manufacture them in Soviet Russia and finally justice can be served!

Real boids?

[davi_bock]

I wonder if they base their algorithm on Craig Reynolds' boids?

They just gave "shutdown" a whole new meaning :)

[Seiruu]

*imagines little MPAA people running around with guns*

Flcoking Behavior

[Cryptacool]

As an A-LIFE dork I think the fact that they got these planes to exhibit true (if they arent lying little light on details) flocking behavior, it's not hard to make things flock it takes basically 3 instructions.

1) Follow the plane/bird in front of you
2) Go about as fast as the plane/birds around you
3) Don't hit other birds/planes, keep a reasonable distance.

Emergent behavior is really amazing if you are interested in it some more check out alife9.org Its the website of the last alife conference in boston that took place over the summer, really neat stuff in there.

Re:Flcoking Behavior

[DietCoke]

I'm not much for birds, but I am partial to christmas tree flocking.

However, that isn't quite as wild as watching it done with planes, I'm betting.

Re:Flcoking Behavior

[dmaduram]

Hmm, I could be wrong about this, but flocking behavior is *vastly* more complex than the three points that listed in the parent's post.

From what I understand, flocking doesn't result from just 'following the birds adjacent to you', but instead a result of optimizing a complex multiplanar lifting system in order to reduce total flight power demand.

Honestly, I'd be suprised if the researchers were able to emulate the real purpose of a flock, instead of just emulating superficial swarming behavior -- there was a very readable article in Science written by two guys at Caltech on flight efficiency & flocking, and they conclude with the premise that: "theoretically 25 birds could have a range increase of about 70 percent as compared with a lone bird"

IMO, programmed swarming behavior is nothing new, but if these researchers run with the ball and generate *real* efficiency-optimizing flocking behavior with man-made aircraft, the ramifactions could be huge.

Re:Flcoking Behavior

[siriuskase]

I wouldn't put anything past a flock of birds. I've seen the movie, much scarier than that shark movie.

Want funding?

[MoralHazard]

I'm amazed that the article didn't include any references to "Homeland Security" or "fighting terrorism". Doesn't it seem like every single goddamned new idea, or retread of an old one, gets stretched in the marketing to push the security applications for terrorism?

Where there's money, though...

Re:Want funding?

[manojar]

because that is being done in the UK, where homeland security is the bobbies protecting the crown and her jewels.

Re:Want funding?

[Vo0k]

Because they were developed in UK, not US, the land of Freedom.

Re:Want funding?

[eagles-wings]

I believe that's the University of Essex in the UK - we went on a tour there to see their robotics dept. The helicopter is hovering above their powerd floor so that robots can re-charge whilst on the floor (that's how I could tell it was the UK Essex)

Pretty cool idea though - wish I'd gone to that campus now instead of the Southend one.

Oh well...

Re:Want funding?

[Shaper_pmp]

Maybe in the US, but here in the UK we're refreshingly clear of unnecessary terrorist paranoia.

Might be because we don't currently have a large, powerful right-wing coalition bent on dominating the entire political process, who needs a constant state of paranoia and fear to create the climate in which they can fulfill their orwellian wet-dreams (it's our "left"-wing party now)...

Or possibly just that we sensibly got all that expansionist empire-building crap out of our systems a hundred years ago, before all the little brown people we were bombing, gassing and shooting had the technology to get back at us.

Now? Oh, you know... bygones.

Bullet with Beowulf Wings

[goneutt]

I'm visualizing a flock of computer controled ultralight orinthopters with wings made of plastic explosive. Commanded, they flock and gather on places where a demolition charge needs to be set. Once a critical number gathers, they organize to make a shaped charge, and BOOM!!!.

Also, visualize a bombsquad guy in all that padding chasing these things with a net.

Re:Bullet with Beowulf Wings

[myowntrueself]

I was thinking something similar, except more along the lines of 'the days of the strategic bomber are numbered'.

Clusters such as you describe might be the killer defense that could render the strategic bomber vulnerable and obsolete.

Can we say Michael Crichton???

[Supp0rtLinux]

Sounds like something out of Michael Crichton's Prey

My Treo/PDA/Smartphone Optimized Site

Re:Can we say Michael Crichton???

[Mister Impressive]

No, these things don't cluster to form life-like mimics of things or people, don't self-replicate or chew up mp3 players.

I think it's more technology catching up with nature.

Can you overclock this?

[goneutt]

I see a natural benefit to building flying webservers. When the /. effect kicks in, you accellerate to increase the cooling, and if nessicary, you take the flock out of populated areas to burst into flames.
Probably work better in england, here in my part of Texas the red tailed hawks would probably take 'em down.

why? how? perhaps this will shed the light

[phloydphreak]

I agree with the why; no matter how cool it would be to be sniffing for wifi and running across the webservers' routing from my home machine, it seems silly to exert so much effort (read money) for the effect. Maybe is is useful for someone who does not want their website to be tracked by big brother(tm)... which is feasible in the US now-a-days. Yet just by doing that, one would need to be using open AP's that one is flying by, just asking for Federal Freddy to not so proverbially nail your ass to the proverbial wall.

Yet I disagree with the blimp. You have to be able to upload your requests, meaning you will need an amplified radio to communicate to the blimp, leading to alot of crosstalk. Same problem with the orbital idea. If you want to solve this problem with uber-transmitters like satellite dishes, you are looking at (i dont remember exactly from cs 428, but somewhere in the range of) 128kbps u/l and 64-48kbps d/l.

Re:why? how? perhaps this will shed the light

[jnf]

if nothing else think of the implications of a highly mobile (flying) intranet- the original design was to survive a nuclear holocaust and this further helps that (although i doubt it gets high enough to really make a different)-- however it is a step in that direction. Also, think of military uses, again it would need to be high altitude to be really usable but a highly mobile communications system could replace microwave point to point communications in that sense. but hell, i really dont know what im talking about it's just what popped into my head.

Post a link to...

[andy jenkins]

...the world's smallest flying web server

and let's crash the focker.

this story has everything....

[jpardey]

unmanned planes, linux, bluetooth... wait, no breasts. Nevermind.

Bluetooth Season

[Reteo Varala]

So, by using the right virus, and a bluetooth rifle, you can shoot these planes down?

Re:Bluetooth Season

[quarkscat]

Actually, no virus will be needed. Just shoot down the lead "bird", and the rest will fly in formation smack into the ground. Wish that shooting ducks was that easy, although it wouldn't be "sporting".

This could work with driverless cars

[Anonymous Coward]

The following are obvious ideas, but maybe publishing them could prevent patenting.
* A queue of cars is also like a flock
* Onboard computers can co-operate in helping drive the cars, or entirely drive the cars
* The cars can use a suitable operating system, such as Linux.
* The cars can communicate through radio, light, sound etc., using any protocol, for example blue-tooth.
* At a junction, any car can choose to leave its current flock and join one heading more towards the car's destination.
* Each flock of cars uses external navigation information from satellites, broadcast radio, networks such as the Internet, contactless chips in the road surface, etc.
* The flock co-operates to receive navigation information, giving greater total bandwidth and better positional accuracy.
* Flocks share information with other flocks, reducing the effect of traffic jams.
* A car can reserve a parking place or other service, to be ready as (or just before) it arrives.
* A driver can pay money to adjust the priority of his or her car, giving it priority when cars decide who should overtake, or who should go in the "fast lane", or park closest to their exact destination.

Military uses?

[david.heyman]

I can see how parts of this might be interesting in a military application. Run several UAV's in formation with one person controlling them. Use the bluetooth to enable them to triangulate positions and keep from getting too close to one another.

Well, against the slashdot effect ..

[RedLaggedTeut]

You know, I wonder WHY does one NEED a flying webserver that's small?

Obviously, when a webserver detects the slashdot effect, it will signal the UWWWWCOM, which will quickly deploy a flock of webservers towards the site to serve webpages.

Then, when the slashdot effect cools off, the flying webservers can be redeployed as necessary, maybe to provide entertainment to soldiers in Iraq.

A very efficient use of resources, isn't it?

Where to begin?

[wowbagger]

Where to begin with the jokes?

But penguins cannot fly!

Great! Now we can re-shoot Hitchcock's "The Birds" with the [RI|MP]AA as the stars!

Now I'll have to wash all those core dumps off my car!

SQUAWCK! We are the Borg. SQUAWCK! Resistance is futile! SQUAWCK! 4 of 99 wants a cracker! SQUAWCK!

A robotic parrot/web server is the perfect gift for a data pirate - when will ThinkGeek carry them?

Do they use RFC 1149?

HIgh Altitiude?

[bigattichouse]

How about a swarm of high altitude balloons that form a telescope array? using their fans, they can stay in relative position to one another.

cooperation

[willCode4Beer.com]

The planes might be able to exploit each other aerodynamically as well. If a plane can position itself in the upward moving portion of the wingtip vortex of the plane in front of it, it could potentially use less power to keep itself airborne. If the planes rotate the "leadership" position then they may be able to fly for extended periods of time.