Bulgarian open-hardware specialist Olimex has proven off an ongoing challenge, involving pan-European collaboration, to create an autonomous drone swarm powered by an Olimex single-board pc — full with video of a profitable flight take a look at.
“This week, we examined a challenge that we’ve got been engaged on for some time with a world EU crew,” Olimex founder Tsvetan Usunov says of his current work. “Edge computing with drones made by C-Astral Slovenia, OLinuXino open supply {hardware} with EU SOC [System-on-Chip] inside from Olimex Bulgaria, TSN [Time-Sensitive Networking] Linux assist from Linutronix Germany, and edge computing algorithms carried out by Nexedi France.”
In a video accompanying the announcement, Usunov exhibits light-weight fixed-wing drones flying in a swarm and altering their roles as required. “These small drones weigh lower than 2kg [around 4.4lbs], can fly as much as 40 minutes with a velocity of 20m/s, and may go as much as 40km (round 25 miles) away,” Usunov claims. “They will talk with one another and kind a swarm, which may carry out missions even when there is no such thing as a connection to the bottom management middle.”
Usunov suggests the autonomous drone swarm may very well be put to make use of for aerial mapping, search, wildfire and flood monitoring, livestock or different animal census, and extra, delivering a claimed protection of 60km² per drone per day. Full technical particulars of the drones and their payloads, although, haven’t but been launched.
Usunov’s full write-up is accessible on the Olimex weblog.
