Custom Drones

UAV Swarm for Desert Flight

A fully equipped research drone for multi-UAV (swarm) missions in harsh environments

Challenging environments

Robots and specialised autonomous drones can be used for completing unique tasks in different environments, each of which comes with its own challenges. When deploying UAVs in harsh environments, such as forests or deserts, it is often necessary to modify or enhance the technology.

Contrary to indoor spaces or even outdoor settings like parking lots or fields, wild forests and deserts can be challenging to navigate. Several methods relying on the underlying structure of an environment, such as level ground or distinct features for vision-based systems, tend to fail.

UAV swarm solution for harsh environments

Fly4Future designed a specific custom drone for the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi (TII) for multi-UAV missions in harsh environments. The onboard sensors and open-source autonomy engine enabled the UAVs to perform several different tasks in the desert.

For the simultaneous deployment of a large number of UAVs in the desert, it was also crucial to create a compact design. The team at TII tested their algorithms with a swarm as large as 20 UAVs flying in a compact group over the desert.

Application

The UAV swarm can be used for several different applications:

Performing critical tasks, like search-and-rescue
Monitoring plant and animal life, which can be extremely challenging for humans in a harsh environment
Coverage of large areas with better accuracy
Assistance to human monitors in searches, or long-term monitoring of an environment
Track and transform desert wildlife over time