Description du projet
Davantage de satellites autonomes grâce à l’IA embarquée
Le marché des microsatellites et des satellites classiques connaît une croissance rapide et prend en charge des services importants, notamment les communications et l’observation de la Terre. Alors que d’autres systèmes, des robots industriels aux voitures, deviennent de plus en plus autonomes, les satellites n’ont pas suivi cette tendance. La PME italienne AIKO a mis au point MiRAGE, le premier logiciel de vol basé sur l’IA conçu pour permettre une autonomie de mission accrue pour les microsatellites et les satellites conventionnels. Ce logiciel permettra non seulement de réagir plus rapidement aux problèmes potentiels, mais aussi de réduire la main-d’œuvre nécessaire pour commander et contrôler les satellites et leurs missions. Le projet MiRAGE, financé par l’UE, valide la compatibilité du logiciel éponyme avec les architectures informatiques embarquées de la plupart des microsatellites et des satellites conventionnels en vue de sa commercialisation.
Objectif
There are currently around 1,600 active satellites orbiting around the Earth, and more than 4,500 will be launched within 2026. None of them is designed to be autonomous. For a standard mission, this turns into a time span of several hours to detect system failures, to perform orbit and attitude correction, and to identify important mission events as monitoring of forest fires, flooding, or acquisition of important scientific data. In an era where Artificial Intelligence is making cars and other systems smarter and more autonomous, at AIKO Space we have seen a huge market opportunity in endowing spacecraft with AI-based capabilities. We are a team of experts in aerospace engineering and Artificial Intelligence, and we have developed MiRAGE, the first in-flight software on the market based on AI and designed to allow increased mission autonomy for micro (< 50kg) and conventional satellites. MiRAGE has proved that an important mission indicator as the “personnel to spacecraft ratio” can be decreased by the current average value of 2.5 to 0.1 thus providing a substantial value to customers as satellite manufacturers and satellite operators. The product development roadmap is now focused on validating the compatibility of MiRAGE with most micro and conventional satellites’ onboard computing architectures (Phase 1), which will also allow us to have a more thorough assessment of the actual market potential of our solution. The following step will be to proceed with system engineering and preparation to the in-orbit validation (Phase 2) together with large prospective customers, which will pave the way to the beginning of the commercialization phase in Q4 2020. We plan to install MiRAGE in more than 250 satellites by 2022, generating a turnover of more than 8 M€ after 3 years of commercialization, and targeting EBITDA levels in the range of 45%, in line with the standard in the sector.
Champ scientifique
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringastronautical engineeringspacecraft
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinateur
10123 Torino
Italie
L’entreprise s’est définie comme une PME (petite et moyenne entreprise) au moment de la signature de la convention de subvention.