The SKYFUSION research and development (R&D) project seeks to develop advanced GNSS-independent navigation systems for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a.k.a. drones. This will be achieved by integrating disruptive new motion and imaging sensors with artificial intelligence (AI) techniques through advanced sensor fusion algorithms. The project’s overall objective is to enable accurate and reliable autonomous flight in complex and adverse environments.

The project will investigate and develop advanced sensing technologies, including a star tracker, LiDAR Doppler velocity log, short-wave infrared visual odometer, and LiDAR odometer. Geodetic-grade GNSS receivers, miniature atomic oscillators/clocks, barometric altimeters, and navigation-grade inertial measurement units will also be integrated. 

The overall objective of GAMMS is to develop an autonomous terrestrial mobile mapping system (AMMS), based on the tight integration of autonomous vehicle (AV), navigation/geodetic and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. More specifically, we aim at developing an advanced prototype (TRL 6 to 7) of an autonomous terrestrial mobile mapping system –a mapping robot– based on an already existing Level of Automation 4 (LoA-41) AV for cm-level accurate and certifiable mapping to serve the needs of the growing markets of
    1. High Definition (HD) maps for autonomous vehicles (a.k.a. driverless cars),
    2. 3D maps for smart cities and augmented reality (AR) applications,
    3. 3D maps to support Urban Air Mobility (UAM) applications –e.g. package delivery by drone or taxi
    4. drones– and, in general, ground-to-low-level-airspace unmanned applications urban sustainable and safe mobility.

GAMMS mainly focuses on HD maps for AVs. In the long term, we envision fleets of low-cost, autonomous, electrically-powered, mobile mapping systems (MMS) collecting geodata in a massive, continuous yet inconspicuous way to produce/update the base maps of the mentioned HD maps. In other words, robots making maps for robots. 

MapKITE brings together two recent mapping revolutions (aerial robots and mobile mapping systems) in an innovative operational scheme: a mapping drone autonomously following a mapping car to deliver simultaneous air/ground 3D geo-data of corridors (roads, railways, waterways...) In this novel concept, the highest (surveying) costs inherent to corridor mapping are lowered by leveraging computer vision, trajectography and kinematic geodetic techniques. In mapKITE, an enhanced follow-me software virtually tethers the aerial mapping robot from the land mapping vehicle in a mission-efficient way. Market-wise, MAP4CAT mitigates the current bottleneck connecting high-potential technology to the 3D mapping market by gathering a drone services operator, technology supplier and an end-user (local road authority support) through a technology demonstrator validating its technical/economic viability in the target user domain of “road, rail & infrastructure connected with cities.”

The purpose of the AMPERE (Asset Mapping Platform for Emerging countRies Electrification) 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. Indeed, the challenge facing such communities goes beyond the lack of infrastructure assets: what is needed is a mapping of already deployed infrastructure (not known!) in order to perform holistic assessment of the energy demand and its expected growth over time.

In such a context, Galileo is a key enabler -especially, considering its free-of-charge High Accuracy Service (HAS) and its highly precise E5 AltBOC code measurements- as a core component to map electric utilities, optimise decision making process about the network development and therefore increase time and cost efficiency, offering more convenient way to manage energy distribution.