https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240205165940.htm

The findings represent a big step toward efficiently and economically using swarms in a range of roles from wildland firefighting to package delivery to disaster response in urban environments.

Here's a clue about what the research was DESIGNED to create, and it ain't just a tool for delivering your Amazon stuff more efficiently:

"We don't see a lot of delivery drones yet in the United States, but there are companies that have been deploying them in other countries," said Julie A. Adams of the OSU College of Engineering. "It makes business sense to deploy delivery drones at a scale, but it will require a single person be responsible for very large numbers of these drones. I'm not saying our work is a final solution that shows everything is OK, but it is the first step toward getting additional data that would facilitate that kind of a system."

The results, published in Field Robotics, stem from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency' program known as OFFSET, short for Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics. Adams was part of a group that received an OFFSET grant in 2017.