UNMANNED GROUND AND AERIAL SYSTEMS FOR HIDDEN THREATS DETECTION PARTICIPATION TO A TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGE
Progress in IED and landmine detection is hindered by the lack of standardized benchmarks. It is necessary to define representative testing environments enabling an objective and comparable evaluation of developed systems. Furthermore, being the field tests not repeated at will and not perfectly reproducible, especially for detection systems that involve artificial intelligence, online tests of software components are also organized.
TICHE will participate in a series of test campaigns organised in the framework of the technological challenge.
The challenge aims at measuring, in an objective and comparable way,
the performances
of different approaches to hidden threat detection and characterization of IEDs and Landmines.
The potential added value of using sensors embedded UxV systems in addition to sensors embedded in a MGV are
evaluated. In the framework of the challenge, field tests are organised going through a zone with simulated
IEDs and landmines representative, as much as possible, of real ones (real-scale fully functional
devices).
The teams drive the systems in a circuit and systems process the sensor data in real-time to automatically
detect IEDs and landmines. The information is presented to the pilots to help them achieving the goal of
safely reaching the target location.
The challenge lasts four years and covers four evaluation campaign, each lasting about a year. Each field test campaign lasts a week. The first one involves only field tests, a dry-run phase to adapt the evaluation protocols needed before delivering meaningful measurements. The next three evaluation campaigns are fully-fledged ones involving both field and online tests.
The proposed solutions fulfil the following requirements:
- Ability to go through a zone with IEDs or landmines while minimizing the risk of damage
- Ability to detect and map IEDs and landmines in a given area, with maximum accuracy
- Ability to characterize IEDs and landmines, with maximum accuracy.
Systems are able to record the data acquired through their sensors, in order to enable reproduction of experiments in a software environment.
Both open-air (rural) and urban scenarios will be arranged in the circuit.
- A rural scenario is in some respects a “cleaner” and less complex environment than the urban one, with less manmade objects that can cause false alarms.
- In an urban setting is present more clutter, e.g., underground pipelines for gas, water, electricity, and sewer infrastructure, as well as lots of electronic devices. There are also buildings, shadows or concealment caused by garbage in the streets, and a congested RF spectrum (lots of RF signals), which can make detection of hidden objects a more difficult task than in an open-air scenario.
