Navy and university researchers have demonstrated the sharing of data between unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs in flight.
The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), working with the Air Vehicle Intelligence and Autonomy (AVIA) Lab at Pennsylvania State University, tested two powered sailplanes. “The tests, conducted within restricted airspace at Phillips Army Airfield, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, culminated with two ‘powered’ sailplanes sharing telemetry data and cooperatively and autonomously soaring at altitudes in excess of one kilometer and for flight durations of over five hours,” said an NRL news release.
Researchers launched 23 flights over nine days during September and October, totaling more than 30 hours flight time. The tests involved autonomous soaring algorithms, developed by NRFL and AVIA, for sailplane flight.
“Cooperative autonomous soaring combines data from multiple autonomous soaring aircraft to make a more complete measurement of the local atmospheric conditions,” said NRL researcher Dan Edwards. “This atmospheric map is then integrated to guide both aircraft toward strong lift activity quicker than if it was just a single aircraft, a technique very similar to that used by a flock of soaring birds.”
