The Distributed and Collaborative Intelligent Systems and Technology Collaborative Research Alliance (CRA) will create Autonomous, Resilient, Cognitive, Heterogeneous Swarms that can enable humans to participate in wide range of missions in dynamically changing, harsh and contested environments. These include search and rescue of hostages, information gathering after terrorist attacks or natural disasters, and humanitarian missions. Swarms of humans and robots will operate as a cohesive team with robots preventing humans from coming in harms way (Force Protection) and extending and amplifying their reach to allow 1 human to do the work of 10 humans (Force Multiplication). Our research will create swarms that will provide on-demand services in these missions.
The team is led by the University of Pennsylvania and includes collaborators from Penn and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California and University of Southern California.