What the EDA does
An assessment of different defence scenarios in which heterogeneous (ground, air, maritime) teams of robots could provide added value was performed by the EDA in the SMUVO (Scenarios for Multiple Unmanned Vehicles Operations) project.
The EDA’s MUROC project (Multi Robot Control in support of the Soldier) provided a survey on the state of play in robotics research with a focus on multi-robot control and man-machine teamwork.
The project has clearly shown that there is a strong interest from the defence sector for cooperatively working with robot systems. More R&D work is needed and a variety of new technologies need to be further developed, improved and tested before the military can harvest the full potential of RAS. This is especially true for safety critical tasks related to warfare where the level of dependability has to be maximum.
In this domain, several R&D projects have already been or are currently being carried out within the EDA framework. The ASIMUT project (Aid to SItuation Management based on MUltimodal, MUltiUAVs, MUltilevel acquisition Techniques) aims at decreasing operator workflow during a surveillance mission lead by swarms of UAVs. To this end, new algorithms were developed to increase detection and data fusion capabilities, and increasing the autonomy of UAV swarms. SPIDER (Inside Building Awareness and Navigation for Urban Warfare) aims to provide a proof of concept for an innovative system to improve the soldier’s inside-building awareness through the support of mobile robots.
Finally, EuroSWARM (Unmanned Heterogeneous Swarm of Sensor Platforms) will develop and demonstrate techniques and technologies for adaptive, informative and reconfigurable operations of unmanned heterogeneous swarm systems.