SKYOPENER will increase the use of Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) for civilian applications by contributing to the European RPAS Steering Group's roadmap for the integration of civil RPAS into the European Aviation System. SKYOPENER will provide a whole operational process and a system that will demonstrate higher capability through Communication, Navigation and Surveillance innovations in RPAS. The SKYOPENER system will be designed, in the first instance, for specific operations for tactical RPAS, that are under 25kilos but subject to national aviation authority regulation, operating at Very Low Level of operation (under 500ft). SKYOPENER will include live trials in Switzerland for which we will gather stakeholders implicated in the operations of RPAS including RPAS operators, civil aviation authorities, air navigation service providers, RPAS manufacturers, satcom service providers etc. The newly developed system will be the result of the integration of a range of components which will combine technologies such as GNSS, satcom and security tools. GNSS will be used for the safety navigation of RPAS. The project will provide a command and control link that uses communication through multi-band satellite and radio and will address the redundancy issue of communication systems It will also feature a surveillance system with detect and avoid functions that will be based on GNSS, system wide information management and satcom. Such a system will be less costly, less complex, lighter and easier to roll out than those that are currently using mode-S transponders. SKYOPENER project brings together a seven partner team with a range of expertise and skills. Additionally we will include in the project a stakeholder group which will advise on the requirements of the project, witness the trial operations and support in the dissemination of results from the project. The range of partners, stakeholders and European associations give SKYOPENER a European scope.

ARESIBO aims at improving the efficiency of the border surveillance systems by providing the operational teams and the tactical command and control level with an accurate and comprehensive information. The pillars of research in ARESIBO are three-fold: 1. Set-up a complete configuration at tactical and execution level to optimise the collaboration between human and sensors (fixed and mobile), 2. Improve situation awareness by enhancing the understanding of the situation through adapted processing of sensor data, correlation between heterogeneous data and information and creation of knowledge through deep learning techniques and 3. Create a situation awareness capability at C2 level that will combine reports on previous missions, real time situation understanding and threat analysis for future actions. This capability will be used to optimise the operations (teams deployment and sensor positioning) as well as an online briefing tool for the teams that will be able to access to the results of the previous missions while in the field. ARESIBO integrates research activities in the domain of 1. surveillance platforms (air, ground, surface, underwater) to optimise the collaborative capabilities of the platforms and their positioning (between themselves and with the teams), 2. Sensor processing to interpret, fuse and correlate all the data to produce information and knowledge and 3. Augmented reality techniques to elaborate and provide to the operators a situation awareness picture which is fit for their missions (minimum information for maximal understanding) both as team level and tactical C2 level. The ARESIBO system will be developed incrementally during the 3 years with two major versions that will lead to sub-versions for land and maritime borders. The system will be tested and assessed in 1. a controlled environment enabling testing at any time without pre-requisite authorisations and 2. in real conditions in Finland, Greece, Romania and Portugal for the 2 versions.

The creation of the Schengen area has been one of the major achievements of the EU. However, this agreement requires countries to cooperate tightly in order to keep a high level of security at their internal borders, as well as to share the responsibility of managing external borders. Such a variety of borders (land, sea and air) and current challenges requires a consistent approach to border surveillance, based on a plethora of heterogeneous assets. These can be manned or unmanned, ranging from sensors (optical, radar, IR) to unmanned platforms (UAV, UGV, USV or UUV), and need to be combined to offer an integrated situational picture of the area under surveillance and of their location. In order to effectively control their operation and manage the large amounts of data collected by them, new approaches for command and control need to be considered, allowing efficient interaction between the operator and the different assets in the field. CAMELOT proposes to develop and demonstrate different advanced command and control service modules for multiple platform domains, based on a SOA architecture that specifies internal and external interfaces, allowing the development of a modular and scalable command and control station, customisable to the user needs. This architecture can be based on results of previous studies and work or open architectures that may prove more suitable and the interfaces can take advantage of the standardisation work that has been done already. After the definition, CAMELOT partners will prototype service modules according to their expertise, background individual technologies and practitioner needs. These will be integrated progressively in specific testing along the project. This prototype development approach will culminate in 2 final demonstrations involving end users and relevant stakeholders, to achieve a maturity of TRL6 (for most individual technologies supporting the functionalities for border surveillance) and an IRL of 7 for CAMELOT.

The aim of SANSA project is to boost the performance of mobile wireless backhaul networks in terms of capacity and resilience while assuring an efficient use of the spectrum. Recently, a global mobile traffic increase of 11-fold between 2013 and 2018 was predicted, so novel solutions are required to avoid backhaul becoming the bottle neck of future mobile networks. The solution envisaged in SANSA is a spectrum efficient self-reconfigurable hybrid terrestrial-satellite backhaul network based on three key principles: (i) a seamless integration of the satellite segment into terrestrial backhaul networks; (ii) a terrestrial wireless network capable of reconfiguring its topology according to traffic demands; (iii) a shared spectrum between satellite and terrestrial segments. This combination will result in a flexible solution capable of efficiently routing the mobile traffic in terms of capacity and energy efficiency, while providing resilience against link failures or congestion and easy deployment in rural areas. Therefore, we will develop novel smart antennas, dynamic radio resource management and data-based shared access techniques for enabling the spectrum sharing among both segments, as well as efficient management and routing solutions for the hybrid network. These studies will yield to the implementation and demonstration of the two key components proof of concepts: (i) low-cost smart antennas (to be deployed in terrestrial nodes) with beam and null-steering capabilities for interference mitigation between satellite and terrestrial transceivers and network topology reconfiguration; (ii) hybrid network manager capable of controlling the resources of the hybrid network. Besides indirectly allowing the traffic increase to the mobile users, the SANSA project will set the path for a win-win collaboration between satellite and terrestrial operators that will strengthen both European sectors and also their related industries such as equipment manufacturers.

The main purpose of ASSISTANCE project is twofold: On the one hand to help and protect different kind of first responders’ (FR) organizations that work together taking into account the type of disaster/crisis they are mitigating in each moment and on the other hand, to enhance their capabilities for facing complex situations providing them advanced training based on Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR), tailored to their real needs depending on the type of incident. ASSISTANCE project will use novel technologies such as; UAV, Robots, drones’ swarms and advanced training based on VR, MR and AR for increasing the FR’s situation awareness (SA) taking into account their need in terms of data (e.g. real time video, persons and objects location, evacuation routes status, ad-hoc network coverage and so on). Different types of adapted SA modules will be developed inside a common SA framework capable of offering the sensor outcome needed by each FR organization (e.g. real time video and resources location for firemen, evacuation routes status for emergency health services and so on). Regarding training, an advanced training network based on VR, MR, AR and other novel technologies and methodologies (e.g. tailored curricula, immersive interfaces, adapted training methodology definition, etc.) will be established in order to share different VR platforms and scenarios for enhancing the current training capabilities and skills of different FRs organization. All the ASSISTANCE results will be tested under controlled conditions in three different demostration pilots. Solutions will be developed in compliance with EU societal values, fundamental rights and applicable legislation, including in the area of privacy and personal data protection. Societal aspects (e.g. perception of security, possible effects of technological solutions on societal resilience, gender diversity) have to be taken into account in a comprehensive and thorough manner.