Drone Formation Commercial Software:

This is another addendum to the discussion about Drone Formation Commercial Software as described in this document. In this section, we describe surface detection. Drones can help with surface detection by using an encompassing space around the surface to detect. Let us assume that an object, say saucer like, needs to be surrounded by drones. The points of reference along the object as positions around which the drones must organize themselves can be easily determined by the drones themselves. We further assume each drone can detect the distance to the object by themselves or passed to each drone from some central sensor in real-time. If the scouts can figure out the overall matrix of X-Y-Z coordinates that is sufficiently large enough to encompass the object, then the rest of the drones can make use of this initial grid to spread themselves out before each converges to a point of reference closest to it and independent of others as long as it safe and not colliding with other drones.

The scouts do a two-pass flyover the objects while the distance remains within a range. If the range is exceeded, the boundary of the encompassing grid is known. With the initial pass determining the grid a subsequent pass to converge as close as possible to the surface of the object while maintaining a distance from each other, helps the drone to determine the points of reference on the surface. With the full strength of the drone formation then spreading over and distributing themselves against the points of reference will help to cover the surface.

When the number of drones is in excess of those required to cover the surface, they can form ever-increasing layers over the underlying points of reference. These points adjust to be on one layer for the layer above and the logic remains the same for additional drones to work out the new positions to occupy. Wave propagation and Fourier transform can predict how soon the drones can cover the object or the number of layers to form and the rate or duration for full coverage by all the drones.

Distance from each other as well as to a point of reference is sensor-specific and merely translates as an input for the drone to determine the actual position to occupy as the output. This works for all stationary objects in an outward-grid-enclosing-on-to-the-surface-of-the-object manner for the drone formation. Selection of the initial number and identities of the drones for the scouts can be determined by a threshold for the maximum distance allowed for a scout. After a scout reaches this threshold, another scout covers the next interval to the allowed threshold.

Moving objects have the characteristics that their shape remains constant during the flight and if the end points for the object can be tracked as distinct positions over time, then they the frame of reference can be adjusted to include the initial and final positions for a given time slice.