Shield AI Tapped for LUCAS Autonomy

Well, a drone with the same name as some dude you hung out with in college is getting a buzzy upgrade. Yesterday, autonomy giant Shield AI announced that it’s been tapped by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW R&E) to build its Hivemind autonomy software onto LUCAS—the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System. Hivemind will play AI pilot for the Shahed-like attack drone, “enabling groups of drones to coordinate, maneuver, and adapt together to changing conditions in real time, based on warfighter input.” “LUCAS is about delivering affordable mass, but mass without coordination is limited in value,” Brandon Tseng, president and co-founder of Shield AI, said in a statement. “Hivemind is the AI pilot that makes that mass intelligent.” The company plans to do a demo controlling a swarm of LUCAS (LUCAS-es? LUCAS-i?) this fall. Big bucks: Shield AI has had quite the year, in case you hadn’t noticed. The company—founded in 2015 by brothers Brandon and Ryan Tseng—has made a name for itself building all things autonomous. And they’ve raised a pretty penny to do it. Five-sided friends: And to say Shield—and Hivemind—have been popular with the Pentagon and industry would be the understatement of the decade. Strength in numbers: The most important thing for LUCAS seems to be Hivemind’s autonomous swarming bona fides. With Hivemind, LUCAS operators will pretty much only have to worry about strike. The software will take care of the rest. Good news, too, when Iran’s reportedly got about 80,000 of their own Shaheds stocked up (and the capacity to produce hundreds more a day). Hit ‘em with a taste of their own medicine, ya know?