These aren鈥檛 sharks, but dozens of underwater drones homing in on their destination. The swarm consists of SwarmDivers, small rocket-shaped vehicles, that can work cooperatively to carry out impossible feats for single robot submarines, as shown in a new video.
The SwarmDiver drones were unveiled last week by Aquabotix, a firm based in Australia. While many autonomous underwater vehicles are already in use, Aquabotix says their SwarmDivers can work as a group, with one operator controlling the entire swarm via a simple interface. Launching is as simple as throwing them into the water and then they communicate with each other to adopt the desired formation.
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Each SwarmDiver weighs under two kilograms and is 75 centimetres long. They have electric propellers that produce a top speed of around 8 kilometres per hour and an endurance of over two hours. They can travel on the surface or dive down to fifty metres, gathering data with a variety of sensors. Once a mission is completed, SwarmDivers return and line up for collection. Aquabotix says SwarmDiver is the first swarming underwater drone on general sale.
One suggested application for underwater drones like this is plume tracking. When a swarm detects a pollutant, it can measure its intensity at different points in the water and then track it back to the original source. The swarm could also be used to take environmental measurements at many different points simultaneously.
鈥淭he positive aspect of these vehicles is their speed and power, ability to swarm and ability to operate in the surf,鈥� says David White, who manages UUVs at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. 鈥淗owever, the two-hour endurance is very low. They need to be recovered almost as soon as they are launched, and have to be launched and recovered within a mile or so of the survey area.鈥�
White adds that he could see military applications for the technology. the possibility of 鈥渟ophisticated, coordinated assaults through tracking, trailing and overwhelming targets,鈥� as suggested by the video of dozens of SwarmDivers surrounding a boat. And Brendan Martin, executive director of Aquabotix, says there have been some initial military trials.
Read more: Watch this robotic fish flap its fins in Fiji鈥檚 Rainbow Reef
