GRASP is a University of Pennsylvania research center with $10 million in funding. General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) describes their work as such...
"Pioneering GRASP researchers are building autonomous vehicles and robots, developing self-configuring humanoids, and making robot swarms a reality. Our doctoral students are trained in theory and practice and mentored to become leaders in research and education. The graduates of the interdisciplinary Master's in Robotics program are uniquely equipped to face research and development challenges of the fast-growing robotics industry." ~ www.grasp.upenn.edu
I first heard about the work going on at GRASP last in 2011 when Buzz Out Loud mentioned it in a report about robotics. Lately, GRASP has been featured in the blogosphere because of a certain video featuring a group autonomous of quad copters playing the theme from a James Bond movie. This is a great example of coordinated swarm robotics and it gets attention because they are small and cute and folks can reconize the James Bond tune. Good song choice guys! Buzz Out Loud co-host, Brian Tong, even memarks during the video about how cyborgs will use these precision flying quad copters to "rain death down from above" during the coming cyborg take-over.
However, I find this video even more likely to be an accurate glimpse into how the cyborgs will use autonomous flying vehicles. Specifically, they will use them as builders of much larger, ground based, cyborg weapons platform.
It seems more likely that swarms of flying robots will be builders rather than used as attack aircraft. Here's my thinking. First, these flying vehicles have to be light weight, especially if they need to carry a payload. Their strength comes from numbers. If an object is too heavy for one copter they can coordinate and use many copters to lift something like a structural beam or machinery into place.
If they were used as an attack platform the quads would have to be much larger, heavier and need huge amounts of power to stay aloft while carrying heavy guns and enough ammo to sustain a fight. Although who is to say a flying swarm of tiny one-shot copters couldn't be an effective first wave attack. Battlefield re-arming stations "manned" by ground cyborgs could reduce the time it would take to return to the battle while also being more effective at targeting humans hiding in the ruins of fallen cities.
But for me, I would think the main application for autonomous flying vehicles would be for the manufacturing and replication of larger cyborgs and infrastructure. The limits imposed by power supplies and gravity would mean these flying robots need to stay small. One logical idea would be that the cyborgs will base their manufacturing operations under water to take advantage of the simulated reduced gravity. Under water manufacturing could allow the autonomus robots to build huge attack cyborgs that would rise out of the sea near major cities with little warning. This could be the very first attack wave human encounter when the cyborg take-over begins. Even scarier still I can picture a huge cyborg as tall as a skyscraper emerge from the sea. Immediately it releases massive swarms of autonomus one-shot flying robots. So massive is the swarm that some are assigned to air defense clogging the skys while others scourer the ground hunting for human targets. When out of ammo or power they can return the the gargantuan mother-cyborg and be re-fitted for another launch.
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