The project AMPERE, coordinated by the Italian Free Soft & Tech, had its kick-off meeting to initiate activities regarding the implementation of a drone-based platform for asset monitoring of electric networks, targeting the use case in Republica Dominicana.

Prague, 13 February 2020. Hosted by the European GNSS Agency’s headquarters, a consortium of five European companies and a south American university triggered activities of the AMPERE project. Being its full name “Asset Mapping Platform for Emerging countRies Electrification”, the main goal of the project is to engineer and to start to commercialise a dedicated solution, to be used for electrical power network information gathering. AMPERE will support decision making actors (e.g. institutions and public/ private companies in charge to manage electrical network) to collect all needed info to plan electrical network maintenance and upgrade.

In particular, the need for such a solution comes in emerging countries (worldwide) where, despite global electrification rates are significantly progressing, the access to electricity is still far from being achieved in a reliable way. This is why one of the key partners of the project is the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña (UNPHU) from Republica Dominicana, that will act as an on-the-field contributor to identifying needs from potential users and setting logistics for the platform tests.

Ismael Colomina, GeoNumerics’ CEO, presented “MapKITE: a tandem drone and terrestrial corridor mapping system and method” at the 57th Photogrammetric Week, held at the University of Stuttgart (Stuttgart, Germany) from 9 to 13 September 2019.

Castelldefels, 17 September 2019. On 10 September 2019, in Stuttgart, the mapKITE technology and method was presented by Ismael Colomina, GeoNumerics’ CEO, to the participants of the biennial “Photogrammetric Week” technical meeting –the PhoWo. The presentation, co-authored by Pere Molina and Marta Blázquez, followed an invitation of the PhoWo organisers.

The mobile tandem drone-aerial/terrestrial mapKITE geodata acquisition and data processing method was presented before an international audience of more than 250 participants. In the presentation, the mapKITE acquisition concept, the processing strategy and results from controlled tests in a Brazilian motorway and in the Atlantic French coast were discussed. Recent results on the use of mapKITE in urban and natural GNSS-unfriendly canyons obtained with the dynamic network adjustment technique were also presented.

When moving people by air, particularly with unmanned aircraft like the future taxi drones, a navigation failure is not an option. The recently started EU-funded research and development project DELOREAN aims at developing the navigation and positioning requirements for the future urban air mobility and urban air delivery missions.

Castelldefels, 3 February 2020. The urban air mobility (UAM) and urban air delivery (UAD) project DELOREAN, coordinated by the Spanish company Pildo Consulting S.L. –a.k.a. Pildo Labs– had its kick-off meeting on 31 January 2020 at the European GNSS Agency (GSA) premises located in the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Espacial (INTA). The research and innovation project, funded by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 (H2020) programme and managed by the GSA, aims at the identification of the navigation and positioning requirements for the challenging future UAM and UAD services, and to demonstrate how the European GNSS stands as an enabler of UAM and UAD.

The project HYCOS, coordinated by GEOSAT and GeoNumerics, was pitched at the G7 Summit held in Biarritz on 24th August 2019, highlighting the benefits of the tandem air-ground 3D mapping concept for coastal erosion monitoring.

Castelldefels, 28 August 2019. Cédrik Ferrero, GEOSAT’s CEO, presented the project HYCOS on coastal foredune erosion monitoring at the opening of the G7 Summit held in Biarritz, on the 24th August 2019. The presentation, which took place before the opening speech by President Emmanuel Macron, followed an invitation of the “Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine” and the “Communauté d’Agglomération Pays Basque” after the successful completion of HYCOS.