multi-purpoSe Physical-cyber Agri-forest Drones Ecosystem for governance and environmental observation

Project Information

SPADE

Grant agreement ID: 101060778

DOI

10.3030/101060778

EC signature date 7 June 2022

Start date 1 September 2022

End date 31 August 2026

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 5 822 937,50

EU contribution

€ 5 816 687,50

Coordinated by

ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SPADE (multi-purpoSe Physical-cyber Agri-forest Drones Ecosystem for governance and environmental observation)

Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

SPADE is a 4-year project funded by the European Union within the Horizon Europe programme, with 21 partners from 10 European countries and an overall budget of 5.8 M €. The project has started in September 2022, is coordinated by CERTH.
The strategic objective of SPADE project is to develop an intelligent ecosystem to address the multiple purposes concept in the light of deploying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs alias drones) to promote sustainable digital services for the benefit of a large scope of end users in the sectors of crop production, forestry, and livestock. This includes individual UAV usability, UAV type applicability (e.g. swarm, collaborative, autonomous), UAV governance and UAV-generated data trustworthiness. Multi-purposes will be further determined in the sensing dataspace reusability based on trained Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) models. These models will enable sustainability and resilience of the overall life cycle for developing, setting up, offering, providing, testing, validating, refining as well as enhancing digital transformations and “innovation building” services in forestry and agriculture (crop and livestock farming). Pilot cases will contribute toward greater goals, such as the reduction of deforestation, precision farming and animal welfare.
Three Pilots, one per domain (i.e. forestry, crop production and livestock farming), deploying 9 Test Cases, which, combined with 2 Open Calls for up to 12 complementary small projects will contribute toward the goals of sustainable forestry and farming.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Concerning the regulatory framework analysis at international and national level, data on the mapped legislation were aggregated. Governance applications overview is ongoing to contribute to the D1.2. SPADE was also very active in contributing to standards related to UAS while the gender dimension analysis produced relevant outcome that has been published in book chapter. The requirements for the development of the SPADE-manufactured drones were defined by the consortium and the SPADE flying platforms have been developed. Three types of drones are constructed within SPADE: a) small size swarm drones, b) medium size with edge-computing capabilities and c) medium-large size planting drone. The SPADE ecosystem architecture has been defined and the the platform with integrated DTw was developed along with the data broker infrastructure. Furthermore, edge computing algorithms were developed and are currently being evaluated. A DTw simulation system for environmental impact assessment using different possible scenarios is also being developed.
Wthin WP4, the pilots are fully deployed, while the 1st SPADE Open Call has finished and the toolds developed were Open Sourced and are available through ECLIPSE platform. The second SPADE Open Call has launched within RP2 and the sub-projects have initiated their activities. The consortium was very active in the outreach and sustainability actions for dissemination, exploitation and communication and the activities were efficiently communicated with the scientific communities, stakeholders, and general public. Exploitation was also adressed having support by the Booster Service. Finally, the project was effectively managed following a tight management scheme securing continuous communication among the partners and the commission. All the foreseen tasks were implemented without reporting delays and the relevant deliverables have been prepared and submitted as listed in Table 1.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

1. The project developed and is updating an innovative UAS platform for autonomous planting of trees in unreachable areas. The system was submitted for pattenting.
2. Developed small swarm drones for under canopy mapping.
3. Developed small-medium size drones with edge-computing capabilities
4. SPADE contributes to more than 10 standards
5. Developed edge computing algorithms for real time detection and counting of animals
6. Developing ML algorithms for disease detection in potato and olives
7. Developed DTw simulation system for environmental impact assessment

Project logo

SPADE Livestock systems integration

SPADE droens with Edge-computing

SPADE planting drone

mechanism for planting trees using SPADE planting drone

The architecture of SPADE ecosystem

SPADE edge coputing Livestock

SPADE drone with acoustic sensor

SPADE platform

SPADE DTw simulation tool

prototype of mechanism for planting trees using SPADE planting drone