SwarmAI

Unlike centrally piloted civilian fleets that depend on a single ground operator or pre-scripted „drone show“ choreographies, SwarmAI is built for decentralized autonomy under uncertainty and sparse connectivity, adapting in real time via resilient peer-to-peer coordination across vendors and agencies, even when GNSS or other networks degrade. Despite strong advances in individual UAV platforms, European users still lack a trustworthy system-level backbone to field coordinated, large-scale multi‑domain swarms in real missions. Today’s solutions are often centralized, GNSS‑dependent and vendor‑specific, which limits scale, creates single points of failure, and overloads links with raw sensor feeds. SwarmAI closes this gap by delivering an autonomous, interconnected edge‑AI backbone that lets heterogeneous air, ground and maritime vehicles see, decide and act together. The project will combine resilient mesh communications, on‑board multi‑sensor fusion (visual/thermal/acoustic/gas), GNSS‑denied navigation (advanced SLAM, inertial and cooperative positioning), and AI‑driven decentralized coordination into a cybersecure, auditable architecture with standard interfaces and human‑in‑the‑loop control. SwarmAI’s main goals are to demonstrate scalable, resilient swarm operations that interoperate across vendors and agencies, to embed explainable and ethically governed AI at the edge, and to provide federated data and VR‑based simulation tools for validation and rehearsal. By integrating edge processing, self‑healing comms and interoperable mission control, the project will enable faster, safer and more effective responses in life‑critical scenarios (search-and-rescue, flood and wildfire monitoring, energy network inspection, public transportation incidents) while reducing operational costs and risk. Built by a consortium of European SMEs, industry partners and universities, SwarmAI will turn fragmented components into a dependable capability that brings real public value.