Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SPADE (multi-purpoSe Physical-cyber Agri-forest Drones Ecosystem for governance and environmental observation)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
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, tethered), UAV governance models availability 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.
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, tethered), UAV governance models availability 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.
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 first prototypes of the SPADE flying platforms have already been developed. Two types of drones are constructed within SPADE: a) small size swarm drones and b) medium-large size planting drone. The SPADE ecosystem architecture has been defined and the actions for the platform development have been initiated. Furthermore, the first edge computing algorithms were developed and are currently being evaluated. Furthermore, within WP4, the pilots’ actions have been designed and initial pilot activities have started, while the 1st SPADE Open Call has been prepared and was launched within RP1. 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. 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.
1. The project is developing an innovative UAS platform for autonomous planting of trees in unreachable areas.
2. Developing small swarm drones for under canopy mapping.
3. SPADE contributes to 3 standards
4. Developing edge computing algorithms for realt time detection
2. Developing small swarm drones for under canopy mapping.
3. SPADE contributes to 3 standards
4. Developing edge computing algorithms for realt time detection