By Kenneth A. Stewart

NPS Assistant Professor Timothy Chung, third from left, is pictured with members of NPS' Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL) and their unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) "swarm" during the latest Joint Interagency Field Experimentation (JIFX) exercise at Camp Roberts, May 15. The NPS team simultaneously flew 20 autonomous UAVs breaking a previous record.

"I'm incredibly pleased to share ARSENL's accomplishment of successfully flying 20 UAVs simultaneously last Friday during field experiments at Camp Roberts!" said Chung. "This number beats our previous ARSENL record of 12 UAVs, set in April, and we believe it to be a first-of-its-kind demonstration of this magnitude for large-scale, autonomous fixed-wing UAV teams."

The 20 UAVs were successfully launched and flown autonomously in two "sub-swarms" of 10 UAVs each and guided using ARSENL-developed swarm operator interfaces. The UAVs performed basic leader-following cooperative behaviors, exchanging information amongst themselves via wireless links.

"This work has been made possible through the hard work and initiative of our systems engineering and cross-campus team members including [Research Associates] Michael Day, Marianna Jones and Mike Clement as well as [Assistant Professor] Duane Davis, [Research Associate Professor] Kevin Jones and countless others," said Chung.