Northrop Demos Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Systems in DARPA's Human-Machine Teaming Experiment

Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) has utilized multiple heterogeneous unmanned vehicles to demonstrate a swarming approach during a field experiment with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The company said Friday it demonstrated the potential of the Rapid Integration Swarm Ecosystem to facilitate cooperative operation between humans and UxVs in a mock urban environment during the test held at Fort Benning in Georgia as part of DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics program.

OFFSET seeks to equip dismounted troops with over 250 small unmanned systems for manned-unmanned teaming missions.

œSwarm technologies are vital to getting expanded situational awareness in a complex environment like the one in this test, said Vern Boyle, vice president of emerging capabilities at Northrop.

The experiment integrated RISE with technology platforms from University of Central Florida, Michigan Tech Research Institute, Intelligent Automation, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Soar Technology.

Heron Systems also provided a technology built to help RISE manage self-healing tasks when a communications problem occurs.

RISE’s open architecture, called the Robot Operating System, supported the integration of different technologies with the Northrop-made ecosystem.

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