Field experiments at a government training facility demonstrate that a single human can manage a swarm of 100 or more autonomous drones and ground robots without added stress according to the US Defense Department's research agency DARPA.

The Swarm Commander uses a virtual reality interface to deploy and monitor the vehicles within a 10-block simulated environment.

Their mission (is) to navigate the urban environment, avoiding obstacles and power lines to collect intelligence.

The Swarm Commander can basically hit a single button to issue multiple tactics to the Swarm.

So that the Swarm can go out and do the things that it's supposed to do, such as look at a building and try to identify information that's relevant to the mission.

The findings show potential for military as well as civilian purposes, such as sending out drones to respond to natural disasters.

The long-term dream goal is actually to be able to have heterogeneous teams of robots, working alongside teams of humans in something, like wildland fire arial response or disaster response in order to have a true societal impact.

We want to be able to have humans focus on the task that they absolutely must do, that robots really can't do, but also ensure that our responders for example are safer, that we're giving them technologies that help them to deal with the situations that they are in.

Drones can also be used and in fact, are already being used for speedier package deliveries.

Currently, the FAA regulations limit how many vehicles a single individual can supervise in doing these kinds of tasks.