Using machine learning, planning and multi-agent technologies, Accelerated Dynamics is building a full-stack robot intelligence solution that is optimised for enterprise applications. It transforms drones, autonomous cars, satellite systems, unmanned boats into IoT devices that do not require human operators.
The company is a successful start up, back in late 2014 by Mantas Gribulis ( MSc. Robotics King’s College, London) and Umar Wani ( Msc. Robotics & Controls ETH Zürich) The team is now 8 strong and growing every year.
The Team is heavily engaged with multiple sectors, delivering security, mapping, inspection, Emergency response, Search and rescue and mesh communications, across the Military, agricultural, Critical national infrastructure, Policing and Fire safety domains.
The company has developed HALO Swarm Manager – a mission control (or Battle Field Management) software system, that integrates with multiple robots, and enables complete autonomous functions. The inbuilt simulator allows the user to run missions in a virtual world, before deploying the robots. Halo has a cutting edge AI system, that learns continuously; the more the system is used the more efficient it becomes, creating strategies for the autonomous fleet.
Ket features are:
- Intuitive design based on PC gaming experience
- Solving complex mission-management, using neural networks and reinforcement Learning
- Hardware agnostic interface with scalable plug-and-play capability.
One interesting case study is an Agriculture project on the West coast of Africa where they are working with a company called Wefly. At this moment in time, this revolutionary technology has considerably improved the capabilities of Wefly’s services. Wefly were operating one UAV for or the mapping and inspection of one of the largest Coco plantations in the world. Their task was to monitor the health of the crop by taking aerial photographs and stitching them together, which is a painstaking process as there are hundreds of Hectares.
Wefly are now using HALO, where they are able to not only fly multiple UAVs via one operator to cover larger areas, reducing time dramatically. They are able to input a custom flight plans/missions to cover all of the areas of interest and let the software co-ordinate the complete mission, including when batteries are low and a self healing network if one UAVs is manually taken out of the flight or automatically knows if there is a mechanical issue, to return home.
The most important aspect for Wefly is being able to not only carry out their mapping missions in less time with minimal human resources but also to include other services such as perimeter security. Multiple mission selection is a strong feature on the software, whilst the main task force carries out the mapping, they can now add a security detail to the mission, including other UAVs patrolling the perimeter whilst the mapping continues within. They are now able to alert security on uninvited guests which may be stealing from the plantation, the growing of their own illegal crops…..and monitoring staff for safety measures and to make sure they are where they should be.
Source: Press Release