As part of a project led by the Citi research laboratory in collaboration with my department, I had the opportunity to experiment with coordinated drone flying, also known as “flocking.” The goal of this project was to make several drones fly simultaneously while controlling them autonomously through a pre-developed algorithm.

Using infrared-based localization technology, we were able to track the exact position of each drone in real time. By combining these data, we could then adjust the drones’ trajectories to prevent any collisions between them.