Small Planes with High IQ

摘要

Something about the way the brown pelicans flew in formation over the waves transfixed Vince Castelli. He was on vacation at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but the movement of the birds took him back to discussions he and his engineering colleagues at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in West Bethesda, Maryland, had had in a brainstorming session. The team had hatched the idea of small, inexpensive, unmanned aircraft that would fly in formation, cooperatively conducting surveillance, reconnaissance, and other operations against an enemy. It was a vague notion at the time, yielding no concrete design plans. Then Castelli saw the pelicans. Every so often one of the birds spotted a fish and dove into the water to grab it. Within seconds, the rest of the flock closed the gap left by the missing member. When the fishing pelican rejoined the group, it simply inserted itself at the end of the line. "I realized that was the perfect model for our aircraft," Castelli says. "If one [plane] got lost, because maybe the enemy jammed its communications, the remaining planes [would] compensate." A flock of miniature planes, as imagined by Castelli and his team, would also be able to alter plans in mid-flight based on shared information, intelligently responding to unexpected events. "Like the pelicans," Castelli says, "all members of the group [would have] to be able to assume any role depending on what occurred during the mission."