“Drones in swarms (especially large swarms) generally rely on a centralized controller to keep them organized and from crashing into each other. But as swarms get larger and do more stuff, that’s something that you can’t always rely on, so folks at EPFL are working on a localized inter-drone communication system that can accomplish the same thing,” reports IEEE Spectrum.
The new technology allows drones to navigate around buildings and structures, so someone won’t be able to escape the drones by running through a structure with a lot of vertical pillars, like a parking garage. Researchers claim the algorithms for this control are “surprisingly simple”, and derived from studying the movements of flocks of birds, and schools of fish.