Swarming drones could save lives at sea

Inspired by the swarming patterns of animals in nature, a University of North South Wales aerospace engineering PhD student is using biomimicry to improve the marine search and rescue capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Monica Chi, from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at UNSW, is developing computer simulations to test the efficacy of groups of UAVs for finding and tracking people lost at sea.

She has been invited to attend and present her research at the prestigious 2012 International Graduate Summer School in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Beihang University in China this July.

Chi is part of a team of researchers at UNSW using ''evolutionary'' algorithms to simulate novel and chaotic flight formations for UAVs that mimic the swarm behaviour demonstrated by animals such as ants, honeybees, and wolves.

''The strengths of having UAVs rather than piloted vehicles for marine search and rescue is that they are not limited by human capability in terms of flying in dangerous or poor visibility conditions,'' says Chi.

''The simulations help us test and analyse new optimising algorithms to reduce the cost and amount of resources consumed in search and rescue, and also to reduce the response time and increase the probability of saving lives,'' she says.