News

8th August 2008
Grand Challenge Entry
Press Release.doc
Press Release.pdf

PRESS RELEASE

Release embargoed to 8 August 2008

 

Swarm Systems ready for the MOD Grand Challenge

One year ago, the Swarm Systems team was one of six teams awarded funding from the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) to prepare an entry for its 2008 Grand Challenge. 

The challenge is “to create a system with a high degree of autonomy that can detect, identify, locate and report a comprehensive range of military threats in an urban environment.”  This final will “give the teams one hour to send their systems, a mixture of flying and ground vehicles, into Copehill Down village to identify a range of threats which will be planted and recreated by a mixture of realistic props and actors.” 

Rather than trying to shoehorn existing technology, Swarm Systems examined the Challenge’s real needs and created technology accordingly.  The team identified four main elements to this solution: good visibility, hence airborne devices; flexibility in movement, hence devices which can both hover and perch; robust portability, hence the use of quadrotor air vehicles; and, finally, the need for providing consistent information in the face of enemy interference, which this team seeks to achieve through grouping these micro air vehicles into a swarm.

As Professor Owen Holland at the University of Essex explains: “Swarming has many proven advantages.  Most importantly, it can survive unexpected events.    If one vehicle is suddenly lost, then the swarm reconfigures itself to complete the task.”

The team’s concept is simple.  It uses a swarm of eight quadrotors called ‘Owls’.   Their operator uses 3D planning software to swiftly plan and rehearse routes for the Owls over Copehill Down village.  The Owls then fly those routes, taking around one thousand high-resolution images.  On return, these images are processed by a cluster of ten powerful multi-processor PCs, which analyse each image using the University of Surrey’s threat recognition software.  Within minutes, the operator can produce a map of Copehill Down showing the location and type of all recognised threats.

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2 May 2008
Guardian Newspaper Article: 'Mini-helicopters, flying saucers and robot buggies fight it out for war games prize'

29 Apr 2008 
New Scientist Web Article: 'English village to be invaded in spybot competition'

30 Apr 2008
Swarm Systems has a booth at the SEAS and EMRS DTC event at QE2 Centre, Westminster in conjunction with the Grand Challenge All Teams Briefing

22 Apr 2008
Swarm Systems present at Parliamentary Seminar at the House of Commons: 'Intelligent Robots in Science and Society'.

11 Feb 2008
Article in The Engineer Magazine

15 Oct 2007
Copehill Down Reconnaissance visit. All sensing systems tested for Grand Challenge.

7 Oct 2007
Sunday Times Article on MOD Grand Challenge

31 July 2007
BBC Article on MOD Grand Challenge

30 July 2007
You - Help Wanted

27 July 2007
Swarm Systems' MOD Grand Challenge Entry Funded Swarm Systems is excited to announce that it has won a Contract with the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD) to fund its entry for the MOD Grand Challenge http://www.challenge.mod.uk
The MOD Grand Challenge is to create a system with a high degree of autonomy that can detect, identify, monitor and report a comprehensive range of military threats in an urban environment.  SSL's entry will be a swarm of autonomous quadrotor micro air vehicles (MAVs), each weighing less than 1 kg.  The Grand Challenge competition will be run in August 2008 at the MOD training village 'Copehill Down' in Wiltshire.  The Swarm Systems team comprises several UK SMEs and groups at two leading universities.

7 May 2007
Formation
Swarm Systems Ltd was incorporated to provide systems of autonomous MAVs.

 

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