The main objective of COMP4DRONES was to develop a framework of key enabling technologies for safe an autonomous drones for civilian services, technologies that have been evaluated through 9 demonstrators. These demonstrations were carried out under representative reference industrial scenarios. C4D technologies have demonstrated how they can facilitate and enable a future largely deployment of drones applications, supporting the operations of drones at the time drone regulation is ongoing.
The project initiates a repository of 74 components that have been considered essential for easing a safe introduction and operation in real environments. Technologies that are linked with the objectives of: (O1) Easing the integration of embedded systems, (O2) facilitating drones to take autonomous decisions, (O3) to ensure trusted communications and (O4) to minimize the design and verification effort. Analysing the portfolio of component and technology it can be concluded that the project achieves relevant level of maturity, having more than half of the whole set reached a TRL5-TRL6 and almost the other half a TRL4. Seven of this components have a TRL3 due to that they are mostly developments at microelectronic level linked to hardware to support AI applications.
The COMP4DRONES project is not conceived as an isolated project, this is the reason why during the action it has collaborated with other initiatives such as ADACORSA, AW-DRONES, DRONE4SAFETY, RIMA, OPTICS2 and TRACE as well as an advisory board involving experts from the ecosystem (ENAC ITALY, NAVAL GROUP, ONERA, XUNTA OF GALICIA, INTA, etc).
COMP4DRONES ensures the sustainability of its collaborative ecosystem by setting-up the RODENT (European Drones Technologies Network) network. The main objective of RODEN networks is to promote, encourage, and assist for a coordinated development and deployment drone-based technology and services in Europe. The following specific objectives are identified:
1. Set up a virtual drone design platform promoting drone services based on European technologies.
2. Mapping of European “supply” skills
3. Increase cooperation between European Drone Industry
4. Enable more R&D activities
5. Build a competitive offer
6. Expand accessibility to European drone technologies
7. Increase the availability of drone technologies
8. Improve the interoperability of components and tools
9. Increase the qualification of engineers through training to acquire new practices
