Mobile Smart Tracking Antenna System for Remotely Piloted Aircrafts

Project Information

TRACKANT

Grant agreement ID: 652240

DOI

10.3030/652240

Project closed

EC signature date 1 October 2014

Start date 1 November 2014

End date 30 April 2015

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

PIDSO -PROPAGATION IDEAS & SOLUTIONS GmbH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRACKANT (Mobile Smart Tracking Antenna System for Remotely Piloted Aircrafts)

Reporting period: 2014-11-01 to 2015-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

PIDSO, an Austrian SME, specialized in ultra‐light carbon‐fibre antenna solutions for diverse applications e.g. in the automotive and unmanned sector, has developed an innovative communication and control system for Remotely Piloted Aircrafts (RPAs), which is - compared to competitive solutions - significantly lighter and smaller allowing to mount it on RPAS creating the opportunity for using one RPAS as a relay station for another RPAS thereby dramatically increasing range as well as improved data transmission features. This provides the missing technological base for Beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) navigation needed to cross through areas with obstacles like buildings in cities or diverse topographical factors.

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

The objectives of phase 1 (collecting feedback for a fine-tuning road map, estimating future production costs, elaborating a business and market entry plan), could all be met: Field tests with test partners, in particular RPAS manufacturers, were conducted as well as a survey among 11 RPAS and payload manufacturers. This yielded profound feedback from the primary business opportunity fields, which was fed into a road map for fine-tuning the solution to get it from current TRL6 to TRL9. Cost models for production and a detailed business and market entry plan were elaborated.

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)

Apart from the direct outcomes of the project described above, in the frame of the project we were able to even widen the perspectives regarding targeted application fields and the resulting impact. In contrast to the grant agreement, we will first focus on the public safety and industrial inspection area, because our system can create the most convincing USP and benefit in these areas. For agricultural applications, which we had been prioritizing before, portability is not that critical, therefore we will target this area later. We will further observe this and other areas to detect new relevant market opportunities in time.
The project helped to pave the way to deploy our technology potentially unfolding huge commercial and societal impact such as improved disaster and rescue management facilities.

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