Supported projects in Maritime Surveillance

MARITIME SURVEILLANCE

MARITIME SURVEILLANCE

Surveillance systems. Data managment. Optical or optronic cameras. Radar technologies. Earth observation. EGNOS. Drones. DLT - Distributed Ledger Technologies. Cyber ​​security.

KITEYE, SafeSea360, SEAiGRASS, SUIPOL, WATCHFULL

KITEYE

Partners: Kitewinder (France) & Akeros (France) &  ACR SYSTEMS SA (Poland)

Using the air sector in the context of operations at sea is a significant benefit for operators. As such, air assets deployed from ships or land have developed rapidly. The rise in the capacity of aerial drones is leading to an ever more extensive “dronification” of its resources. The infrastructure required to deploy this means remains cumbersome and cannot be applied to all vessels. The constraints of the maritime environment require heavy and complex machinery and pose maintenance, energy, storage and safety problems. KITEYE relies on the constraints of this environment to better adapt to it. This project proposes to use high-altitude kite implemented from any type of surface vessel to deploy powerful optical means and provide access to the third dimension to equipped vessels.

The equipment is composed, for the aerial part of a carrier kite, a powerful day-night optical device and a wind-turbine. This part is connected by cable to a control station comprising an intelligent winch and the display and control devices (screens and controls) dedicated to the operator. This station is mobile and can be deployed on any type of vessel. The operator can deploy the kite sail which carries the optical device up to altitudes of 100 to 200 m, where wind is stronger and constant. The on-board wind generator power the optics and transmissions. The operator carry out his mission from the on-board control station or from a remote station connected to the control station. Ships will see their observation, search and identification capacities greatly increased.

SafeSea360

Partners: INTERDRONES SERVICES (France) &  NUUK TECHNOLOGIES (Spain).

SafeSea360 is a 360º Surveillance and Crisis Management collaborative platform that allows different actors to have real-time situational awareness of diverse emergency and SAR situations, supported by existing data sources and by a i) multi-drone platform plus a ii) long-endurance glider. These sources will provide video, audio, sensor and imaging in real-time to the platform allowing an agile visualization of situational awareness to all involved stakeholders without the need to deploy additional crisis room HW.

Industrial ports face many types of risks that impair their normal operations. Those can be natural (storm, earthquake, etc.), industrial (fire, chemical pollution, explosion, etc.) or social risks (malicious acts, terrorism). Ports use to have an intervention plan detailing the procedures, to be deployed in the event of an incident of each type. Similar situation is faced by Coast Guards.

Based on the size of the incident, a gradual increase in resources is deployed with the intervention of external teams such as firefighters, police, or specialized teams, deploying their own resources. Often, the coordination is limited to audio and/ or text communication and data delivered by static sensors placed in the area. The circulation of this data is often challenged by the poor quality of signal.

Even though the platform enables different possibilities of use cases, SafeSea360 shall apply it in the following use cases: fire at a port hangar, rescue at sea, oil spill close to a port.

SEAiGRASS

Partners: Planetek Hellas Ltd. (Greece) & GPASEABOTS SL (Spain)

SEAiGRASS platform integrates a unique solution for Maritime Spatial Planning, mainly targeting the conservation of Posidonia Oceanica meadows. Although a protected habitat and species, Posidonia has suffered a general regression over the past few years. SEAiGRASS is aimed at integrating high-resolution satellite imagery and autonomous USV data acquisition to obtain high resolution spatial measurements and produce the most accurate results that will meet the requirements of the users. The combination of both applications on a unique platform, SEAiGRASS, will allow to perfectly track the conservation of key environmental parameters. Τhe innovation of SEAiGRASS platform relies on the following different fields:

  • Integration of multiresolution data (high spatial resolution satellite imagery, high spatial resolution from USV) on a unique platform
  • Route planning on a single platform, from satellite to drone, in few clicks
  • Aggregated data to obtain health and conservation indicators on Maritime Areas
  • Cloud hosted SEAGRASS solution

SUIPOL

Partners: AGUILA TECHNOLOGIES (France) &  INKOA SISTEMAS (Spain)

With the objective of acting according to the orientations of the Paris Agreement bringing together all nations around a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its consequences, with increased support to help developing countries, AGUILA has developed interesting partnerships in West Africa, particularly in Senegal. For several years, AGUILA has been working in collaboration with the State of Senegal for the establishment of a safety system at sea by Early warning systems, to strengthen the conservation of fishery resources and to monitor the pollution of maritime waters. The objective is to duplicate this system in the rest of the world, in partnership with INKOA SISTEMAS.

The project will develop a solution for detecting pollution at sea by using sensors (turbidity, pH, salinity, conductivity and temperature) interconnected to the on-board system to upload data to a central supervision platform. The sensors should be able to record in real time the parameters of pollution contained in seawater then transmit them in real time to the on-board system via short distance communications.

The supervision platform should be able to translate all the data sent by the sensors and display them in real time into an interactive map. It should also make it possible to prevent risk zones in the event that pollution is detected.

WATCHFULL

Partners: PERCEPTION (France)

SAS Perception identified that computer vision assisted by artificial intelligence algorithms can have many applications especially in the maritime field.

The SME has set up a specific architecture that uses artificial intelligence to analyse in real time video collected by surveillance systems, whether embarked on a ship or an underwater drone.

The autonomous system will allow the analysis of videos collected directly from the ship / drone.

This on-board maritime surveillance system can also be complemented by one or more drones, allowing coverage of a larger area. From monitoring a given area to assist navigation and help find people lost at sea, this intelligent system can have many applications.