IMPA joins national drone swarm project

IMPA researchers are taking part in a national project aimed at developing technologies for coordinating swarms of drones. The initiative seeks to develop a set of autonomous robots – aerial and terrestrial – capable of operating in a coordinated manner, sharing information and making decisions in a distributed way. The project “Swarm of Autonomous Air and Ground Vehicles: Guidance, Control and Navigation (EVAAT-GCN)” is a commission from the Brazilian Army, through FNDCT-FINEP, with LIARC (IME) as executor and UFPE as co-executor, and a group of researchers from LNCC and IMPA as partners.

At IMPA, the research is led by Luiz Velho, head of Visgraf (Vision and Computer Graphics Laboratory). The Drone Swarm project aims to develop an advanced and integrated system for the efficient control of multiple heterogeneous robots, operating in different environments (aerial and terrestrial) and with different levels of automation. The system must guarantee real-time decision-making, with robust cybersecurity and protection of the algorithms, communication protocols and AI topologies developed. The project aims to research and develop an integrated guidance, control and navigation system for heterogeneous robots, enabling coordinated and efficient operations in defense environments. The integration and coordination of these systems, which operate with different levels of automation, are crucial to increasing the effectiveness of operations and reducing human exposure to risk.

The practical implementation of the framework will be based on formal modeling and verification techniques, guaranteeing the preservation of the properties of interest, as well as facilitating the automatic generation of code and the use of simulators, ensuring that the system is viable for application in real defense scenarios.

Long-standing scientific collaboration

IMPA’s participation in the project is the result of a multi-year collaboration with IME researchers in the field of robotics and autonomous systems. This partnership began in 2018, in international projects involving institutions from BRICS countries, and has evolved into new joint research initiatives.

For Velho, the project also reinforces the role of scientific research in the development of strategic technologies. “IMPA’s work is mainly focused on scientific foundations and innovation in areas such as mathematical modeling, artificial intelligence and data visualization.”