On May 7, the International Unmanned System Swarm Technology Competition (IUSC) COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE 2023 opened at Beihang University. This event consists of multiple components, including academic exchanges and indoor and outdoor technology competitions, and aims to promote the advancement and innovation of unmanned system swarm intelligence technology by setting up competitions with clear objectives, challenging tasks, and great application value.
During the three-day competition, 14 independent or joint teams from universities, enterprises, and research institutes will compete for several prizes in an indoor simulated earthquake rescue scenario by using their developed intelligent algorithms to make a swarm of multiple UAVs autonomously perform tasks such as collaborative obstacle avoidance and assembly, as well as joint ground search and rescue.
Lin Zuoming, director of the organizing committee of the conference and chairman of the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said that drones are profoundly changing human production methods and economic and social development as they appear in various application scenes in a new light. In the context of the huge development opportunities for general aviation, drones, as a combination of “GA+AI” (general aviation + artificial intelligence), will also become an important strategic development direction.
Tao Zhi, director of the organizing committee and vice president of Beihang University, pointed out that unmanned swarm is an important direction for the development of unmanned systems towards systematization and intelligentization. The innovation and development of this field requires the cross-integration of multiple disciplines, collaborative innovation between academia and industry, and joint efforts to solve the problems of swarm intelligence at various levels such as basic theory, key technology, and engineering application.
At the conference, Beihang's “Unmanned Systems Collective Intelligence Virtual-Real Hybrid Laboratory” was officially inaugurated. The lab covers an area of more than 1,200 square meters equipped with a whole-field high-precision motion capture system, which will support the unmanned swarm of artificial intelligence algorithm learning training and verification evaluation to achieve more significant progress.
Writer: Lu Meili
