Sea/Air Interphasic Wing-in-Ground Effect Autonomous Drones

ongoing

SEAWINGS proposes the development of a new class of military surveillance drones, designed and built as wing-in-ground effect vehicles designed to operate in the sea/air interface, giving rise to a new type of unmanned craft, Unmanned WIG Vehicles. Such vehicles could provide enormous advantages over any other locomotion means: they are extremely fast and energy efficient, capable of very high payloads, inexpensive, long-range, do not require infrastructure or launch vehicle for departure and landing, and they can be much more difficult to detect. Among others, the SEAWINGS solution can facilitate Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance activities by EU Member States to increase strategic preparedness and to ensure the success of future defence-related operations and missions. SEAWINGS will conduct a series of complementary research, simulation and assessment activities to confirm and demonstrate the potential capabilities of UWVs for a range of well-defined military and defence scenarios to support and enhance the EU maritime capabilities. During the course of the project SEAWINGS will perform a combination of basic and applied research activities focused on mechatronics, navigation, autonomy and control and sensor fusion experiments in order to establish specifications for WIG vehicles to be successfully operated as drones. Efforts will lead to a large-scale SEAWINGS drone model and assessing it in a representative environment. Specific objectives are: 1) Implement an architecture for the SEAWINGS platform to operate autonomously, 2) Adapt and deliver the technological components for operational field circumstances, 3) Upgrade the operational interface, supervision system, launch and recovery system for field trials and 4) Conduct and evaluate a series of partial field trials according to increasing levels of difficulty. End-users will take active part in SEAWINGS implementation by providing their requirements for the model.