The St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg FRCC RAS) has created an innovative system that ensures autonomous navigation of a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The development does not require additional equipment — only a video camera. This was reported by the press service of the institution.
We have created a prototype system for autonomous visual navigation of a swarm of drones, which, unlike its counterparts, can operate in conditions where satellite navigation (GPS, GLONASS) for one reason or another is either impossible to use in principle, or it does not allow accurate determination of the location of the UAV. It is enough to use ordinary satellite images of the area without additional data — elevation maps, images of radio thermal or geophysical fields, and so on.
To solve large-scale tasks of various kinds, it is necessary to use a swarm of drones. This entails the need to involve a large number of operators and increases costs. Therefore, researchers focused on the development of intelligent systems that allow drones to operate autonomously.
To position each drone, scientists used publicly available satellite images of the area. The prototype system uses artificial intelligence algorithms and is oriented in space using visual data.
A similar image processing occurs during the drone's flight. Data from two pictures are superimposed on each other, after which the coordinates of a specific UAV are automatically calculated. The software package builds a flight route, avoiding dangerous places.
Earlier www1.ru reported that a thousand "Petrels" will be supplied to the Russian military.
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