Unmanned robots capable of monitoring borders with Portuguese signature
26th June 2018
Currently, the existent applications for this goal only involves an isolated aircraft with sensors that aren’t processed on-board. On the opposite side, SUNNY expects the information processing, the use of several aircraft along with the patrol, a detection, identification and automatic classification system, redundant air-to-air, air-ground communications, a single command and control centre and aircraft with autonomous flight, capable of integrating the perception in the loop control. All of this means that SUNNY is capable of changing the sensorial behaviour, the processing or the itinerary of the aircraft in an autonomous way, without human intervention and based on the observed phenomenon.
From the 16 international entities that participated in this project, which is now coming to an end, three of them are Portuguese - Ministry of National Defence (CINAV and FAP) and the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC).
The system was successfully demonstrated in a real environment and the sensors and robots developed under the project are being marketed by the corresponding partners of project. However, there are still a number of constraints in the use of unmanned aircraft under the flight regulation, which means that it isn’t possible yet to use a system as complex as SUNNY without any sort of restrictions.
“The integrated system of SUNNY can’t yet be used without restrictions and here I would like to highlight the “yet” aspect. However, the isolated components are already being marketed. I give the example of the hiperspectral imaging system that was produced and it is now being marketed by a Finnish company or the radar system that is managed by a Dutch company. Regarding the robots, that is, the aircraft, they are being marketed by a Greek enterprise and one of them belongs to the Portuguese Air Force ", explains Hugo Silva, senior researcher of INESC TEC’S Centre for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CRAS).
Regarding INESC TEC, which has been developing technologies such as the on-board sensory information processing, communication and exchange of decentralised information between aircraft, among others, the goal is to integrate these solutions in industrial and business environment in defence and security, but also in civil applications such as in search and rescue systems and environmental monitoring systems.
When it comes to the impact that SUNNY will have in the life of the Portuguese citizens, Hugo Silva mentions that “projects like SUNNY can’t be focused on the short-term impacts but rather on the long-term ones. From the operational point of view, the system that we developed is way too complex for immediate use. For that reason, there is a long way to go in some aspects in order for the system to be used as a whole. However, much of the work done is already operational and the part that isn’t done is going to be ready soon”.
Regarding the Portuguese reality, the developed technology can be applied to solve other real problems, such as the fires where using drones for environmental applications is already being studied. INESC TEC researchers are trying to develop this sort of projects.
SUNNY with a total cost of EUR 13.9 million was funded with EUR 9.5 million by the European Commission under FP7, the research and innovation programme.
The SUNNY project, which is coordinated by BMT Group (United Kingdom), besides the three Portuguese partners already mentioned, it had the participation of MetaSensing from the Netherlands, XENICS and TECNALIA from Belgium, TTI Norte (Spain), the Technical University of Crete , KEMEA, National center for scientific research “Demokritos” and Altus LSA Commercial and Manufacturing from Greece, SPECIM (Finland), Vitrociset, Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le telecomunicazioni and Leonardo – societa per azioni, and Marlo (Norway).
For more information:
Joana Coelho
Communication Service
INESC TEC
FEUP’s Campus
Rua Dr Roberto Frias
4200-465 Porto
Portugal
T +351 22 209 42 4297
M +351 91 919 119 271