DARPA Introduces OFFSET Program for Swarming of Unmanned Systems
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a new program called OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) to help U.S. military forces manage a swarm of unmanned systems in the midst of battle in an urban environment.
The initiative could use both UAS and UGVs as a part of a swarm that includes more than 100 unmanned systems. Effectively figuring out how to manage and interact with these systems could improve a variety of warfighting tactics, including force protection, firepower, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).
In a press release, DARPA program manager Timothy Chung thoroughly explained the reasoning behind the program and what DARPA hopes to achieve from it.
“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,” Chung said.
“We aim to provide the tools to quickly generate swarm tactics, evaluate those swarm tactics for effectiveness, and integrate the best swarm tactics into field operations.”
According to DARPA, the OFFSET program will look to create an “active swarm tactics development ecosystem and supporting open systems architecture” that includes three features.
Those three features are “an advanced human-swarm interface to enable users to monitor and direct potentially hundreds of unmanned platforms simultaneously in real time, a real-time, networked virtual environment that would support a physics-based, swarm tactics game, and a community-driven swarm tactics exchange.”
This program could go a long way in how troops develop strategies while out on the battlefield, and open up new possibilities moving forward according to Chung.
“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,” said Chung.
DARPA plans to expansively test this program and the unmanned systems being used in it. In January, DARPA will host an event to further discuss the program.
