UGLYDRONE

When people hear the term swarm, they often imagine a group of identical drones flying in formation. While this is a useful mental model, it is also limiting.

I propose a broader concept: the Multimodal Swarm.

A multimodal swarm is a collection of autonomous and semi-autonomous assets that cooperate to achieve a shared mission objective. These assets may include aerial drones, ground robots, marine vehicles, fixed sensors, communications gateways, AI agents, cloud services, and even humans. The defining characteristic is not the type of asset, but its participation in a common mission and information space.

In this model, a person carrying a handheld radio, a ground rover, a relay drone, and an AI planning system are all members of the same swarm.

Shared Awareness

Every participant contributes information about itself and its environment.

Examples include:

• Position and movement