European agriculture is facing numerous challenges such as population growth, climate change, resource shortages or increased competition. Besides, the area of land available for agriculture is declining, rural areas become depopulated and farming population is aging. Today’s challenge is to produce “more with less”. Greenhouses protect crops from adverse weather conditions allowing year-round production. Integrated crop management approaches provide better control over pests and diseases. However, the intensification of greenhouse crop production creates favorable conditions for devastating infestation that can cost a 25% of the potential income. Greenhouse crop production is growing throughout the world, generating 46,377€/ha across Europe. GreenPatrol aims at developing an innovative and efficient robotic solution for Integrated Pest Management in crops, which has the ability to navigate inside greenhouses while performing early pest detection and control tasks in an autonomous way. Main developments will be focused on: - Precise positioning to provide accurate and detailed pest maps in greenhouses (light indoor environments) - Perception with visual sensing for on-line pest detection, including reasoning mechanisms for efficient action selection - Strategies for manipulation and motion planning based on pest monitoring feedback. Galileo capabilities are considered a fundamental technology for the proposed solution as it provides better performance against the multipath and signal degradation present in greenhouses. GreenPatrol will achieve a remarkable reduction of production losses and chemicals usage, as well as an increase in quality and competitiveness, leading to more sustainable farming and enhanced food safety and soil and water protection. The project includes a validation stage where the prototype will be tested in real environment to reach TRL7. GreenPatrol will be commercially exploited. Its business plan shows profits starting in year 3.

With the NAVIS Centre in Hanoi, the BELS initiative was able to place a foothold for EU GNSS applications in South East Asia, widely opening international relationships for GNSS solution markets to EU companies. Founded in 2010 the NAVIS Centre serves as entry point for EU companies. Next step to go is the implementation of a fully embedded GNSS NAVIS Demo Centre. It builds upon the broad engagement of companies, researchers and stakeholders during BELS and aims at attracting further EU companies. The Centre will serve as a platform to demonstrate the full value chain of EU GNSS companies; from hardware to software, as well as services and maintenance: BELS+ will support the acquisition of EU demo companies and prepare a local infrastructure for placement of EU GNSS devices to raise awareness for the European GNSS expertise. This process will be supported by promotion activities to EU companies, within EU clusters and at conferences. In teaming up with the bi-annual “European Space Solutions (ESS)” Conference a “European Asian Space Solutions” twin will be launched comprising local SEA events as well as SEA contributions to the ESS. BELS+ includes EGNSS days in SEA as well as Demo Workshops in SEA. Moreover, it will contribute to match companies with well trained professionals as well as it will provide EGNSS trainings for professionals in the EU and SEA and thus enhancing GNSS capacity building. Communication of project progress and outcomes, also to the political EU-ASEAN frame, will accompany the work of a highly qualified & balanced consortium of bundled EU and SEA GNSS support, technical and market expertise aiming at further continuing EGNSS collaboration across continents.

X2RAIL-2 represents the 2nd proposal of the Shift2Rail members in the IP2 “Advanced Traffic Management & Control Systems” domain. The pillar (IP2) challenge is to increase functionalities of the existing signalling and automation systems and related design and validation processes providing a more competitive, flexible, real-time, intelligent traffic management and decision support system, and maintaining backward compatibility to the existing European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and especially its European Train Control System component (ETCS). The X2RAIL-2 project aims, according to the MAAP, to research and develop four selected key technologies to foster innovations in the field of railway signaling and automation systems within the following Technology Demonstrators (TDs): Fail-Safe Train Positioning (TD2.4) - To achieve a significant reduction of the use of traditional train detection systems by means of the attainment of an absolute and safe train positioning system based on a multi-sensor concept, where GNSS is the preferred technology. On-Board Train Integrity (TD2.5) - To achieve the safe On-board Train Integrity to allow the application of new signaling train separation concepts (e.g. Moving Block or Virtual Block) based on the train self -localization rather than on traditional train detection systems. Formal Methods (TD2.7) - To innovate and standardise processes and interfaces in the evolution phases of a signaling project (e.g.: design, implementation, test & commissioning, operation & maintenance) to rationalize the approach and to reduce time-to-market costs. Traffic Management Evolution (TD2.9) - To improve standardisation and integration of Traffic Management processes with the aim to achieve flexibility and scalability within the choice of functional service module managed by TMS. The X2RAIL-2 project aims at reaching TRL5/6 demonstrators.

GNSS is being used for an ever increasing number of safety, security, business and policy critical applications and GNSS functionality is being embedded into many parts of critical infrastructures. International economies are now dependent on GNSS positioning and timing services. At the same time, GNSS vulnerabilities are being exposed and threats to denial of GNSS service are increasing. There is now a need to respond at an international level to ensure that there is (i) a common standard for GNSS threat reporting and analysis and (ii) a global standard for assessing the performance of GNSS receivers and applications under threat. This will ensure the dominance of GNSS as the backbone to our positioning, navigation and timing needs. The STRIKE3 project can be likened to the earliest developments in anti-virus software. Given the global dependence on GNSS, there is a growing need to persistently monitor the threat scene and to disclose the latest information on threats to ensure GNSS remains robust and hardened against attacks. STRIKE3 will develop international standards in the area of GNSS threat reporting and GNSS receiver testing. This will be achieved through international partnerships. GNSS threat reporting standards are required to ensure that international threat databases can be developed. GNSS receiver test standards are required to ensure new applications can be validated against the latest threats. Both standards are missing across all civil application domains and are considered a barrier to the wider adoption and success of GNSS in the higher value markets. STRIKE3 will persistently monitor the international GNSS threat scene to capture the scale and dynamics of the problem and shall work with the United Nations International Committee on GNSS to develop, negotiate, promote and implement standards for threat reporting and receiver testing. In doing so, create new opportunities for EU industry, EU products and the European GNSS programmes.

The success of Galileo will largely depend on its uptake in LBS and IoT markets. Leveraging on Galileo’s features that improve performance in urban environment, FLAMINGO will unleash GNSS mass-market potential. The overarching objectives of FLAMINGO are to develop and deliver high accuracy and reliable positioning and navigation services for mass market uptake, to demonstrate the potential by developing and showcasing ready to market applications on both Smartphone and IoT devices within major European cities, and to foster a new community of E-GNSS consumers and applications. FLAMINGO shall produce a service targeting accuracies of 50cm (95%) and better, employing multi-constellation, PPP and RTK mechanisms, power consumption optimisation techniques as well as the GNSS raw measurements availability. FLAMINGO will deliver hardware and software that utilise the service to its full potential. Technology triggers for mobile devices are provided by Google through the provision of the GNSS raw measurements API that provide access to pseudorange and carrier phase (a prerequisite for the highest order accuracy GNSS positioning) and by various commercial smartphone manufacturers who support these measurements. IoT devices currently provided by three of the consortium partners will be modified, enhanced, and made available for the validation activities. The project will develop and deliver a series of market-ready Galileo enabled IoT and commercial LBS applications in three urban areas that support European ambitions on Smart Cities namely Barcelona (ES), Toulouse (F) and the Gdansk/ Gdynia/Sopot Tricity (PL). In addition the E-GNSS user base and markets will be stimulated through a tiered FLAMINGO Hackathon process which will bring together a mixed community of E-GNSS users, consumers, application developers, GIS and data scientists. FLAMINGO involves nine leading organisations who specialise in location technology, including five SMEs.