Smart Navigation for Autonomous Drones in Extreme Environments

ongoing

Smart Navigation for Autonomous Drones in Extreme Environments (SNADE) To fulfill their missions, the next generation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS) are expected to offer an increased level of autonomy. Their effective deployment requires robust swarming and navigation capabilities when Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) availability is contested or denied and, more generally, in non-permissive environments. The use of various types of sensors (e.g., inertial, optical, infrared, hyperspectral, radar, LIDAR, acoustic, etc.) and intelligent information fusion is necessary to provide the capabilities required to tackle these technical and operational challenges. Such intelligent navigation payloads should be usable on a wide range of unmanned assets, including swarm formations, while ensuring a low SWaP-C (Size, Weight, Power and Costs). Moreover, their performances should be measured in a quantitative, objective, and comparable way. New technological approaches to overcome these barriers are developed in the EDF research action challenge project SNADE. The unmanned aerial vehicles and systems should be able to accurately estimate their positions and to reach designated target areas with high reliability in non-permissive environments subject to GNSS and sensor denial. The performance of these capabilities will be assessed through test campaigns conducted within the framework of the technological challenge organized by ORDEAL. Specifically, the UASs will be able to record the data acquired through their sensors to enable full replay of flights and reproduction of experiments in a software environment. The proposed approaches represent a cornerstone for future integration and operational missions, especially in terms of SWaP-C. Our goal is to bring these requirements to life through a collaborative, multi-disciplinary consortium, comprising universities and companies from across Europe, each committed to their specialized roles.