Benning Teams with University to Study Free-Flying UAS

By Matthew Cox

Infantry officials at Fort Benning, Ga., want squads and platoons to one day get their battlefield intelligence from formations of unmanned aerial systems that fly with complete autonomy.

The Maneuver Center of Excellence at Benning and the Georgia Institute of Technology recently conducted an experiment aimed at testing hardware and algorithms designed to help multiple UAS fly without human involvement.

Georgia Tech scientists have been studying “how these vehicles can autonomously cooperate with one another in multiple groups,” said Charles Pippin, senior research scientist at Georgia Tech.

Benning officials are interested in the research to help shape the procedures guiding how infantry units will operate with UAS in the future.

“We have to pull soldiers from the squad and deplete our fighting force to control these systems,” said Harry Lubin, chief of the experimentation branch at Benning’s Maneuver Battle Lab.

“If we can get to a point where we can basically upload mission sets into unmanned aircraft and have them perform these reconnaissance missions autonomously through cooperating with each other, what we are then doing is taking all the soldiers you might have needed to control X number of UAS and putting them back into the squad.”

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2013/06/10/benning-teams-with-university-to-study-free-flying-uas/