Image of Valkyrie UAV swarm during Arctic Warrior Experiment in 2023. (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment/Espen Hofoss)
The Norwegian Ministry of Defence's (MoD's) Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt: FFI) has reported “significant progress” in information sharing between surveillance and attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) while in a so-called drone swarm, Rikka Amilde Seehus, research manager at FFI, told Janes on 29 January.
Seehus said the development was enabled partly by a software platform for autonomous UAV operations called Valkyrie. The FFI has been working with Norwegian technology company Six Robotics to develop the platform. “It allows autonomous assets to work together at scale, regardless of platform or mission type,” Christian Fredrik Eggesbo, founder and CEO of Six Robotics, told Janes on 30 January.
The past year has also seen new developments in Valkyrie's user interface. “It has become easier for the operator to control the swarm, locate targets, and engage them,” Seehus said. Central to the system's use is the hand-off of targets from surveillance to attack UAVs. When work started on the system in 2022, an interceptor UAV was used amid a team of surveillance UAVs as a quadcopter attack swarm. The operator would control the surveillance UAV, while the attack UAVs would follow autonomously.
“We thought it would be a good idea if a surveillance drone flew together with the attack drones. Then we play on the strengths and weaknesses of the two systems,” Seehus said in a 27 January FFI press release. Initially carried forward for testing with quadcopters, research continues to adapt the software for fixed-wing UAVs as well.
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