During the first twelve months of the project we have achieved all the objectives according to the plan. The development of the activities has been carried out in time and the milestones have been achieved. We have achieved the implementation of a compact Radar and being ready to flight on-board drones. We have demonstrated functional and accuracy capabilities of the instruments, achieving the desired milestone of 1mm accuracy for ground displacement measurements. During this first year we have performed a long-term monitoring demonstration during some months in autonomous mode over a mining area, being able to report about ground deformations. Demonstrating the system autonomy and viability for being operating outdoor. We have also performed several marketing and dissemintation activities performed some activities. We have increased our presence in the mining community by mailings, in workshops, dedicated mining magazines and specially in Linkedin. We have significantly increasing our presence as well in technical workshops acting as oral speaking, chairman and being part of the scientific committee. In general, the project continues according to planned progress. We are pleased with completed management and coordination.
This second year the development of the project has been affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, we suffered delays from our hardware suppliers since early January that affected our technical developments. Later, we were locked down in Spain and borders became closed, therefore we cannot perform the field campaigns and the commercial actions planned for this year. Therefore, we were forced to ask for an amendment to extent the project 12 months to overcome all these problems and complete properly the actions. We expect that frontiers will become opened to perform our last and most important field campaign in Chile in a large open pit mine planned for March next year. Nevertheless, several actions were taken during this year mainly related with the technical developments in WP2 and certifications in WP3, and the accomplishment of the Spanish pilot just before the lock-down in February
The third year of the project has still been affected due Travel/mobility restrictions an the lack of integrated circuits for our hardware devices. Our team reacted very well to those changes and with great resilience the company was able to adapt to these new situations. During all this period the current satellite value added services we are offering to them mainly based on Copernicus EU satellite data have increased. In consequence, and thanks also to the help of this funded EC project DARES has been growing in all areas: employees, business, technology, branding, etc. We have performed and planned recovery actions for all these points and milestones and objectives have been achieved positively. Further, resources, travel, plus the initial communication plan plus risks and mitigation structures were defined, reviewed and adapted to this new pandemic situation. The project is fully aligned to DARES commercial aims and we have the team and processes in place to meet all its aims and to move forward with the commercialization. The plan for exploitation and dissemination has been clearly altered compared to the DOA for the second and the third year due to the COVD-19 but our resources and funding is secured for accomplishing those actions by the next months. We will continue during this third year with the satellite MOTIONMAPPER dissemination and marketing activities mainly in virtual environments and we will start with the first hardware sales in Chile in large open-pit mines.
