Data on animal movements help Hungarian researchers create a swarm of autonomous drones

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Moving in a dense cloud, like throngs of people walking across a crowded public square, 100 drones maneuver through the night sky in Hungary’s capital, the result of over a decade of research and experimentation that scientists believe could change the future of unmanned flight. That’s why the drones themselves don’t need to be pretty, but what they do is pretty because it resembles natural swarming behavior.” Drones have in recent years become a common sight in our skies: Companies like Amazon and FedEx have launched drone delivery services, hobbyists use them for aerial photography and groups of over 1,000 drones have been pre-programmed to deliver large-scale light shows. “The drones will be able to do what they have to do just by communicating to each other.” Using data they gathered by monitoring the behavior of pigeons in flight, the patterns of wild horses in the Great Hungarian Plain and other animal movements, they developed an algorithm that allows the drones to make on-board, autonomous decisions, safely mitigating conflicts and avoiding collisions. While such technology has the potential to increase efficiency across many fields, some researchers have voiced concerns that certain applications of autonomous drones could pose significant dangers. “This detachment could lower the psychological barriers to initiating force, potentially making war more frequent and brutal.” They also write that autonomous drones reducing the human cost of military engagements could “encourage more frequent military actions, leading to faster conflict escalation since fewer immediate human consequences would weigh against the decision to engage militarily.” But beyond military uses, the researchers in Hungary say their technology has the potential to improve people’s lives through numerous other applications.