The US Navy has been testing the coastal defence capabilities of a group of small , autonomous boats , known as “ swarm - bots ” since October , in Chesapeake Bay . The Office of Naval Research showed off the squad ’s ability to patrol and search with four rigid hull inflatable boats ( RHIB ) . Since then, the Navy's boosted CARACaS' ability to have multiple crafts collaborate on task sorting, expand behaviors and tactics and improve automated vessel recognition. The navy has a number of these boats already in use , and they can be retrofitted with the ONR ’s autonomous swarm - based system , Control Architecture for Autonomous Rapid Command and Sensing ( CARACaS ) quickly and inexpensively . The autonomous units can be sent on more dangerous missions than those undertaken by humans , like mine clearance .
The US Navy has been testing the coastal defence capabilities of a group of small , autonomous boats , known as “ swarm - bots ” since October , in Chesapeake Bay . The Office of Naval Research showed off the squad ’s ability to patrol and search with four rigid hull inflatable boats ( RHIB ) . The navy has a number of these boats already in use , and they can be retrofitted with the ONR ’s autonomous swarm - based system , Control Architecture for Autonomous Rapid Command and Sensing ( CARACaS ) quickly and inexpensively . The autonomous units can be sent on more dangerous missions than those undertaken by humans , like mine clearance .