Aerial Drone Swarms: The Next Generation Military Weapon | Institute for Defence Studies and...

"he concept of flying robots and artificially intelligent machines taking on the enemy in groups has always existed in the minds of futurists, and was often seen in science fiction. But, until about a few years ago, technology was lagging to corporealize it. In recent years, with advances in chip technology and software assuming primacy in designing robotics, it has become feasible to design machines exhibiting complex behaviour, achieve mutual coordination and accomplish complex tasks. It is now possible to control, carry out error analysis on and modify the behaviour of robotic machines through algorithms alone without hardware changes. YouTube has a plethora of video footages of drones demonstrating complex behaviours and accomplishing seemingly impossible feats for machines. In one such demonstration, small quadcopter drones, laden with small but potent explosives, were employed as deadly anti-personnel weapons which could be carried hidden in the pocket and launched anywhere to target specific individuals, vital equipment, etc. These drones could even identify the target individuals using facial recognition techniques. Modern drones are getting equipped with artificial intelligence which has made problem solving, target recognition, obstacle negotiation and pathfinding much easier and almost human like. "