Personnel Location and Tracking for Safety, Security and Protection

Project Information

PROTECT

Grant agreement ID: 820867

DOI

10.3030/820867

Project closed

EC signature date 20 November 2018

Start date 1 December 2018

End date 30 November 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 944 693,75

EU contribution

€ 661 285,00

Coordinated by

DUNE S.R.L.
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PROTECT (Personnel Location and Tracking for Safety, Security and Protection)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

DUNE introduces PROTECT (4 patents filed): a new, autonomous, infrastructure-free, wearable tracking system for GPS-denied environments.
The main goals of the project are:
a) acquire a leading position in the GPS-denied localisation market for first responder and CIs;
b) a turnover of 24 M€ within the end of the 3rd year;
c) the break-even for commercialisation between the end of the 1st year and the start of the 2nd year;
d) an increase of qualified personnel in DUNE of approx. 76%, with an average gross wage of 45.000 €/yr.
e) increase of the business for the SMEs involved by DUNE in the industrial/marketing process;
f) a tangible contribution in solving security challenges: i.e. saved lives, success in critical interventions, resilience to crisis, fight crime.

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

"REQUIREMENTS
Outcome of the collection of the requirements
- 57 on-line interviews, provided by executive-level professionals, belonging to first-responders organisations, stakeholders and/or entrepreneurs;
- 10 ad-hoc meetings or joint activities with first-responders organisations, stakeholders and entrepreneurs;
- 5 ""on-topic"" calls for proposals, in-depth analysed.
Market-ready system
The ARIANNA system, originally limited to a localisation system, has been steered toward a “wearable safety system”, enlarging its scope by including also health monitoring and environmental hazards detection systems. This new route given to the ARIANNA system is one joint offspring of the requirements’ refinement of WP2 and the commercial plan of WP5.


PATENTS
EPO number: IT201700088521A1 (31/10/2019)
EPO number: IT201700119916A1, (04/02/2020)
EPO number: IT201700122111A1, (11/02/2020)


CONTACTS FOR MARKETING ACTIONS
ECA (Switzerland), CNVVF (Italy), GLORY-TEK (Taiwan), IAEA (International) , BIACD (China), SAVOX (Finland, USA and China), FABERBEE (Italy) , AVELSAN (Turkey) , ITALPOL (Italy) , FF3D (Italy), Synapses (Italy), Mil Sistemika (Slovenia) , SQAFIFACOM (Qatar) , 3M (International)


PROCUREMENTS/CONTRACTS
- 2020, November: Arianna purchased by the SynapesLab (Italy) to be integrated in their localisation suite.
- 2020, October: contract with the Chinese BIACD, for an extension of the ARIANNA-MAP visualisation tool.
- 2020, September: an order of 2.600 ARIANNA system units has been requested (and, at time being, already pro-forma invoiced for a 2.600 k€ overall amount) by the State of Qatar FIFA project.
- 2020, April: ARIANNA system procurement and testing in Switzerland by ECA.
- 2020, March: procurement of ARIANNA system and studies by IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) of the United Nations.
- 2019, May: the Chinese BIACD, purchased three work batches of a technologic transfer on the applied theory behind the ARIANNA system.
- 2019, January: a number of ARIANNA systems have been purchased by Glory-Tek, an important commercial organisation in Taiwan.
- 2018, December and July 2019: commercial contracts for the ARIANNA system with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) of the United Nations.


COMMUNICATION
Web-media kits: flyers, t-shirts, ARIANNA web site, ARIANNA social media pages.
ARIANNA graphic lines developed and used for all the communication materials.
Development and release of the video teasers to be used as promotional tool on web sites and in fairs.
Three “learning pills” have been developed, debugged and released in June 2020.
The “serious game” suite has been released in October 2020.
Invited lecture at the New Space Economy ExpoForum (NSE), (10 to 12 Dec. 2019).
Article in the “Feuerwehr Fachjournal” (Dec. 2019 issue).
Advertisement in the “NOI” magazine of the Italian Firefighters (Dec. 2020 issue).


PROMOTIONAL ACTIONS
IPIN 2019 (Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation) conference, in Pisa (Italy), Sept. 30th - Oct. 3rd.
FLORIAN trade fair, a large exhibition dedicated to firefighters, held on 10-12 October in Dresden (DE).
MILIPOL exhibition in Paris (FR), on 18-22 November, 2019.

SYSTEM DEMONSTRATIONS (in person)
The following six in-person demonstrations have been performed:
Pisa (Italy): July 29th-30th, 2020, target CNVVF (National Corp of Italian Firefighters).
Beijing (China): November 24th, 2019 – December 9th, 2019, target BIACD (Beijing Institute of Aerospace Control Devices).
Rome (IT), November 13th and November 20th, 2019, activities in the frame of the PROTECT WP3.
Rome (Italy), 09 July, 2019: target ITALPOL (Italy) largest Italian Company of private security agents.
Beijing (China): May 14-21, 2019, target IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) of the United Nations.
Beijing (China): December 6-12th, 2018, target BIACD (Beijing Institute of Aerospace Control Devices).

SYSTEM DEMONSTRATIONS (remote)
Rome (Italy), 11 June, 2019: SAVOX (Sweden) large Company provider of equipment for the Swedish government, on-line remote live demonstration, successful.
Rome (Italy), 03 July, 2019: target FaberBee (Italy) start-up focussed on security, indoor-outdoor tracking capabilities demonstration, successful."

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)

Updated status of the business idea
The implementation of the SME Instrument Phase-2 has not led to a modification of the original business idea and plan. PROTECT spotted a better vision of the potential market and a better quantification of the reachable market. This didn’t change to a significant extent the business idea, but addressed to a refinement of the product offer (unique platform with layered products/services and the extension toward a “wearable safety system” paradigm) and customer’s approach policies.

Evolution of the strategic idea
As a result of the initial refinement of the requirements (WP2) and of the communication and marketing plans (WP6 and WP5, respectively) the strong indication of an enlargement of the scope of the business idea emerges, so to enlarge the engagement rate and the marketing pool. The evolution of the strategic idea is to move from the ARIANNA as a “location and tracking system” toward ARIANNA as a “wearable safety system” that, beside its location capabilities, also offers (as optional elements) the real-time monitoring of the health status of the user and the surrounding environmental hazards (e.g. carbon monoxide, chlorine acid).
This evolution also changes the marketing and communication strategies, entailing a change of the value proposition; the major change is in WP3, because the scale-up for the market-ready system needs a re-design of the system layers.

Change of the objectives, concept, approach and impact
With respect to the original plan, the approach has been enlarged, including a broader ensemble of potential customers and, accordingly to this, adapting the offer, moving from the sale of devices and software to the offer of a platform, capable of meeting the need of devices, software, maintenance, consultancy.

Above the State of the Art
- Technical element beyond the SoA: the scale-up activities of WP3 enabled the design and implementation of new processing techniques for the improved step detection, compass-based drift removal, improved accuracy for the vertical position.
- Not-technical element beyond the SoA: the new direction of ARIANNA as a “wearable safety system” is an innovation element in the current competitive scenario. This element, beside the advantage of enlarging the engagement of the customers, also creates a deeper gap between ARIANNA and the (possible) competitors, difficult to overcome in the short period.

View of the internal PCB of the MCU of the intermediate version of the market-ready system

The market-ready system, with the sensor unit (smaller box) and the MCU

The ARIANNA promotiuonal flyer used in the Communication/Dissemination activities

Result of the demonstration carried out in July 2019 with the Italian Firefighters in Pisa (IT)

Aricle on the ARIANNA system in the Feuerwehr Fachjournal