Skip to main content

These drones could team up to lift injured soldiers off the battlefield

Drone Demonstration

Until robots replace human soldiers on the battlefield, it’s unfortunately a reality that soldiers run the risk of getting injured in war zones. In cases where that injury is severe enough, it may be necessary to physically evacuate the individual from the field of conflict to take them out of harm’s way. That’s where an innovative new project from researchers at Georgia Tech’s School of Mechanical Engineering aims to help.

Recommended Videos

Rather than resorting to anything as old-fashioned as medics with a stretcher, Georgia Tech engineers have been working on a system that involves teams of drones working together to lift wounded soldiers off the battlefield or, potentially, take civilians from a disaster area. This is achieved by using multiple eight-propellor drones, each capable of lifting a 65-pound object, which, when combined, can lift a person a distance of 500 yards. You can think of it a little bit like a version of Amazon’s proposed drone delivery service — with the exception that it could one day save lives rather than just delivery time.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“The difference between our system and other concepts of ‘drone delivery’ is that we allow multiple vehicles to carry a package together, rather than only using a single vehicle,” Jonathan Rogers, assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff school of mechanical engineering, told Digital Trends. “This allows the range of package weights that can be carried to be significantly expanded. For instance, if one drone can carry a package up to 15 lbs, four drones together can carry a package that is 60 lbs. It allows us to scale our lift capacity to different payload weights by adding more vehicles as needed.”

Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech

As neat and obvious a solution as this may sound, there’s a reason why it hasn’t been widely adopted — it’s a tricky engineering feat to pull off. In order to achieve cooperative flight control, the drones must coordinate with one another on control actions. That’s especially difficult in cases where the center of gravity location of the package (in this case a person) is unknown. The drones also have to be mindful of where their partner drones are located, lest they collide with one another.

To cope with these challenges, Rogers’ team has developed special adaptive flight control algorithms.

“We have already designed and demonstrated a docking device that will allow these drones to connect to packages, which has been demonstrated in a series of flight tests,” Rogers said. “The next steps will include finalizing the cooperative flight control laws and performing flight experiments where multiple vehicles fly to a payload, connect to it, fly it to a destination, and detach from it. This will demonstrate that such a system can work in practice.”

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
DJI could drop a new drone this week. Here’s what to expect
dji could drop a new drone this week heres what to expect air 2s pre launch photo

Though not confirmed by the company itself, DJI is expected to unveil an update to its popular Mavic Air 2 drone this week.

The new drone is expected to be called the Air 2S, and while the name suggests an incremental update rather than a major design overhaul, there will still be some notable improvements. The news comes courtesy of OsitaLV, a reliable leaker who called it right with, for example, DJI’s FPV drone and the Osmo Pocket 2 camera.

Read more
Watch 500 Intel drones light up the night sky for St. Patrick’s Day
watch 500 drones light up the night sky for st patricks day intel drone show dublin

Orchestra of Light - Intel® Drone Light Shows for St Patrick's Day

This year’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were muted by the ongoing pandemic, though Intel was allowed to fly a fleet of 500 drones over Ireland's capital city for a dazzling light show that it later shared on YouTube.

Read more
Future armies could use teams of drones and robots to storm buildings
Ghost robotics

AI Empowered Robots Perform Indoor Surveillance

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Israeli defense firm that dates back to the 1940s, has shown off a new artificial intelligence-powered system that lets drones and robots enter buildings together to scan the insides in order to create maps.

Read more