Turkey's Havalsan Developing Herd Intelligence for Drone Swarms

Turkey’s Havelsan is developing herd intelligence and has created an algorithm for coordinated operation of unmanned land, air and underwater vehicles.

“Rather than the autonomous operation of a single vehicle, we aim to develop herd intelligence that will allow a group of vehicles to operate in a coordinated way,” Mehmet Akif Nacar, the deputy general manager of the HAVELSAN Education and Simulation Technologies Department, was quoted as saying by Anadolu Agency.

HAVELSAN Education and Simulation Technologies Vice General Management has been working on autonomous systems since 2018.

The company completed development of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) recently. The UGV is very close to mass production following the qualification tests.

“We are carrying out studies on autonomous vehicles with the concept of joint operations. We will do this phase by phase. It is an important technological development. We will start with unmanned ground vehicles, then we will continue with air and water vehicles. Since we will use the same protocols, algorithms and systems in all of them, we will be able to plan them as a single system that can communicate with each other and coordinate with their subsystems,” Nacar added.

The HAVELSAN UGV has engine control system, battery monitoring system, environmental sensors such as LIDAR and RADAR, data fusion unit, artificial intelligence module, health condition monitoring system, and camera and imaging systems. It has a length of 150 centimeters, a width of 100cm, a height of 60cm and a weight of 350kg. The vehicle, powered by an electric motor, can reach a speed of up to 7kmph.

Various tests, including those related to tasks, were carried out on the ground vehicle, especially regarding operations in adverse outdoor conditions such as snow, mud and rain.