Drones in Pervasive Use

UAV IN GAMING TO EXTERMINATION

Vedaprakash M S, Roshan, Hariprasad | Pervasive Computing | January 11, 2017

Table of Contents
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 2
Nature of Drones / UAV ........................................................................................................... 2
Using Gaming Tactics in Drone Army (Study by DARPA) ..................................................... 3
Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 3
Bibliography: .............................................................................................................................4

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Introduction
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of dronesor unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAV)thanks to technological advances that have made drones more
powerful. Drones also now come in all - sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from
professional systems for military use to small-scale toys for children.

Given this increase in drone numbers and use, researchers have started
investigating how drones affect people in terms of how they conduct their work,
execute tasks, communicate with others, and interact with this technology. In
addition, the increased availability of individual drone parts has made it easy for
DIY communities to develop novel and interesting projects, creating opportunities
across a wide range of new application domains. This special issue explores some
of this research and the opportunities it presents.

Nature of Drones / UAV

Drones have several characteristics that make them appealing to the research
community. First of all, they can navigate over uneven terrain. This lets them
circumvent the problems of other navigating systems, such as wheel- or leg-based
robots, which often struggle to cover nonfat surfaces. In addition, their aerial view
offers a unique perspective of the world. People can use them to gain a better
understanding of hard-to-reach geographical areas. Finally, people are starting to
prefer drones over other aircrafts because theyre more economical, smaller, and
lighter. One initial appeal of drones was that they did not require a pilot onboard,
thereby ensuring humans werent at risk in military operations. Now, thanks to
recent advances, drones are available at a fraction of the cost of a manned aerial
vehicle, and their small size makes them easier to transport and launch.
Furthermore, because theyre lighter, theyre more fuel efficient and, in the case of
a crash, are often less likely to cause damage. These characteristics are helping
drones move beyond military operations, making them ripe for use in pervasive
computing. However, drones arent without their shortcomings. For example,
despite these shortcomings, drones provide an interesting area for future research,
enabling novel opportunities.

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Using Gaming Tactics in Drone Army (Study by
DARPA)
Urban areas continue to vex the military as tall buildings and narrow streets keep
impeding troop communications and tactics. While ground soldiers have used
single drones for years, DARPA believes that a whole swarm could mitigate those
disadvantages, giving units more eyes and guns. Since the military is currently
unable to control such swarms, DARPA is launching a new program to develop
both drone-wrangling tech and the tactics they'd need to assist soldiers in urban
environments. Oh, and they want video gamers to playtest the best strategies.

The program, called OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET), aims to

produce over a hundred tactics to be used by systems of over a hundred
unmanned air and/or ground drones. Developing a usable interface will be key,
and researchers will consider using virtual and augmented reality along with
gesture and voice commands.

To develop operational tactics and maneuvers, OFFSET will also make "a physics-
based, swarm tactics game," according to a DARPA press release. The networked
game seems like a competitive playground, letting users explore different methods
and submit their tactics and performance to a leaderboard for bragging rights. They
even want players to interact and swap tactics, building a community of play testers
to mix-and-match collective behaviors and algorithms to hone the best ways to
control drone swarms.

"With the technologies and tactics to be developed under OFFSET, we anticipate

achieving a deeper understanding of how large numbers of increasingly
autonomous air and ground robots can be leveraged to benefit urban warfighters,"
DARPA program manager Timothy Chung said in the press release. "If we're
successful, this work could also bring entirely new scalable, dynamic capabilities
to the battlefield, such as distributed perception, robust and resilient
communications, dispersed computing and analytics, and adaptive collective
behaviors."

Conclusion
User use simple gestures, voice commands, and other low-bandwidth signals to
command whole fleets of unmanned ships. Now the U.S. military is looking for
something similar, to help develop battle-drone tactics for next-generation urban
warfare.

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The program also seeks a virtual environment that would support a physics-
based, swarm tactics game that would allow operators to rapidly explore, evolve,
and evaluate swarm tactics to see which would potentially work best on various
unmanned platforms in the real world. Users could submit swarm tactics and track
their performance from test rounds on a leaderboard, as well as dynamically
interact with other users.

Bibliography:
DARPA wants your gaming tactics for its drone army
(https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/12/darpa-wants-your-gaming-tactics-
for-its-drone-army/)

Wanted by the Military: An Enders Game Controller for Urban Robot
Swarms (http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/12/wanted-military-
enders-game-controller-urban-robot-
swarms/133758/?oref=DefenseOneTCO)
drones ripe for Pervasive use - IEEE Computer Society
(https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/pc/2017/01/mpc2017010021.pdf)

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