Maintaining Quadcopter Swarm Behavior Without GPS or a Tracking System

With the rise of technology like self-driving cars and drones, it’s obvious that we’ve entered a stage of rapidly developing autonomous navigation. Current systems are remarkably reliable in their intended environments, and the robots being developed by companies like Boston Dynamics prove that autonomous navigation can be adept even in unpredictable terrain. The problem is that these systems are extremely dependent on GPS or other external location systems.

Relying on something like GPS isn’t an issue for something like a self-driving car, because GPS is reliable, cars generally stick to roads, and they have plenty of space and power for a receiver. However, not all robots have that luxury. Some are very small, and can’t accommodate the weight or power of a GPS receiver. Others might end up in locations where a GPS signal can’t reach—like a cave or underwater.

To address the first issue in particular, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a swarm of quadcopters that can maintain their formation without the assistance of GPS or an external motion-tracking system. Each bot has an onboard camera and inertial measurement unit, with which it can determine its position relative to features on the ground. A ground station is used to send commands to each bot in order to set formations, but all of the flight control and positioning is handled on the tiny 250g quadcopters.