NEST - Networked Ensemble of Swarm Things

Team

• Benzon Carlitos Salazar (salazarbc24@uww.edu)
• Kevin King (kingk20@uww.edu)
• Anjali Gupta (guptaam23@uww.edu)
• Griffin Polly (pollygs14@uww.edu)

Project Overview

This capstone project develops a proof-of-concept Crazyflie 2.x drone swarm system, where multiple drones equipped with the Flowdeck V2 fly in coordinated patterns. Instead of a hardware mothership drone, an external computer vision "mothership" (implemented with a webcam and OpenCV) detects objects and motion in the environment, processes this information, and issues commands to the swarm. The objective is to demonstrate real-time swarm behaviors guided by vision-based input, enabling applications such as mapping, object tracking, and search-and-rescue scenarios.

Objectives

• Swarm Control Framework: Build a Python-based swarm manager using the Crazyflie Python API to control multiple Crazyflie drones simultaneously, supporting hover, synchronized takeoff/landing, and simple formation behaviors.

• Computer Vision Integration: Implement an OpenCV pipeline to perform object detection and motion tracking through a webcam, serving as the centralized "mothership" brain for the swarm.

• Vision-Guided Coordination: Translate vision detections into coordinated drone actions, allowing the swarm to react autonomously to external stimuli (e.g., following a moving target or converging on a detected object).

• Proof-of-Concept Demonstration: Validate a centralized architecture where the external CV system issues commands to multiple Crazyflies, showcasing potential use cases in autonomous coordination.

Getting Started

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/carrliitos/intelligent_drone_swarm.git
cd intelligent_drone_swarm

2. Create and Activate a Virtual Environment

Linux/macOS:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Windows (PowerShell):

python -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

3. Install in Editable Mode

Dependencies are defined in pyproject.toml.

python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
python -m pip install -e .

This sets up the fly command in your venv.

4. Run the Drone CLI

Basic usage:

fly udp
fly radio 7
fly radio 8 vision