WHACO — Warranted Hierarchical Autonomous Cooperative Operations

Resource-aware distributed autonomy governor for energy-constrained multi-agent drone systems.

Developed by Blackridge Autonomy LLC.

Overview

WHACO is a bolt-on throttle governor that sits downstream of any route planner and selects from 8 discrete thrust modes based on wind alignment, fuel pressure, distance to goal, and look-ahead conditions.

Core Capabilities

Mode Table

Installation

pip install blackridge-whaco

Optional dependency groups:

pip install blackridge-whaco[viz]   # + matplotlib
pip install blackridge-whaco[dev]   # + matplotlib, ruff, coverage
pip install blackridge-whaco[all]   # everything

Quick Start

from blackridge_governor import Governor

gov = Governor(fuel_budget=4.0)
thrust, mode_id, mode_name = gov.step(
    wind_x=-3.0, wind_y=0.5,
    fuel_remaining=2.8, dist_to_goal=45.0,
    groundspeed=6.2, throttle_pct=0.55,
)
print(f"Mode: {mode_name}, Thrust: {thrust:.0%}")
# Mode: SPRINT, Thrust: 85%

Adaptive Governor (Online Threshold Tuning)

from blackridge_governor import AdaptiveGovernor

agov = AdaptiveGovernor(fuel_budget=4.0, eval_window=50)

for step in range(1000):
    metrics = {
        "survival_rate": 0.95,
        "fuel_efficiency": 0.7,
        "connectivity": 0.5,
        "mission_progress": step / 1000.0,
    }
    thrust, mode_id, mode_name = agov.step(
        swarm_metrics=metrics,
        wind_x=-2.0, fuel_remaining=3.0,
        dist_to_goal=50.0, groundspeed=6.0,
    )

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│  Governor (per-agent, 15us)      │
│  8-mode throttle selection       │
│  Fuel pressure model             │
│  Stall detection override        │
│  3D wind alignment               │
└──────────────────────────────────┘

┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│  AdaptiveThresholdController     │
│  Diagonal CMA-ES, eval_window    │
│  Rate-limited, CDO-locked        │
│  Safety revert on degradation    │
└──────────────────────────────────┘

Testing

# SDK smoke test
python -m blackridge_governor.demo --quick

# Adaptive thresholds tests
python -m blackridge_governor.adaptive_thresholds

API Reference

Governor(fuel_budget=4.0, thresholds=None)

Core throttle governor. Call .step() each tick to get (thrust_frac, mode_id, mode_name).

Key parameters for .step():

• wind_x, wind_y, wind_z — Wind vector (m/s)
• fuel_remaining — Current fuel level
• dist_to_goal — Distance to goal (meters)
• groundspeed — Current ground speed (m/s)
• has_wind_cov — True for EKF2 wind, False for groundspeed proxy

AdaptiveGovernor(fuel_budget=4.0, eval_window=50)

Governor wrapper with online CMA-ES threshold adaptation. Pass swarm_metrics dict to .step() for in-flight tuning.

AdaptiveThresholdController(eval_window=50, ...)

Standalone threshold controller using diagonal CMA-ES with safety constraints (rate limiting, CDO lock, degradation revert).

License

Proprietary. Copyright (c) 2026 Blackridge Autonomy LLC. All rights reserved.

See LICENSE for details. For licensing inquiries: contact@blackridgeautonomy.com