Open Architecture for UAV-Based Surveillance System

Overview

The goal of OPARUS project is to elaborate an open architecture for the operation of unmanned air-to-ground wide area land and sea border surveillance platforms in Europe. This architecture is based on analysis of concepts ans scenarios for UAV-based aerial surveillance of European borders. It takes into account the emerging legislation for insertion of UAS into controlled civil airspace. The technical aspects cover surveillance sensors, appropiate aerial platforms, secure datalinks, communication networks and generic ground control station. The project particularly focuses on cost-efficient solutions enabling maximun efficiency of the UAS operations for European border surveillance.

OPARUS is a Coordination Action (CA) financed by the EC, DG- ENTREPRISE under the FP7-SEC-2008-1 call. It started in September 2010 and will last for 18 months.

Objectives

The overall objective of OPARUS project is to identify ways to develop an open architecture for the operation of unmanned air-to-ground wide area land and sea border surveillance platforms in the EU. The architecture should be based on the developing concepts and scenarios for aerial surveillance through close relationship with the Users community, and the developing legislation for insertion of unmanned aerial systems into controlled civil airspace in the EU. The technical aspects of the open architecture should include among others, concepts for surveillance sensors, platforms (including various take-off and landing strategies), secure data up- and downlinks and platform independent ground stations to control cost and maximise efficiency and effectibeness of the operation of the unmened aerial system. In developing the project maximun use should be demostrated of ongoing initiatives in the EU and beyond. The nature of non-military use of UAV requires cos efficient solutions to be found.

In the frame of the project, specific objectives are alse defined:

• list the border surveillance missions that could be dedicated to UAS and define scenarios to provide an operational framework to the architecture design;
• describe the current regualtion framework to identify the limitations of UAS border surveillance operations and recommend some regulation evolutions to extend the UAS use in border surveillance;
• define generic classes of UAS components to define the characteristics, the performances and the range of production costs of the current UAS technology and define in a second time the technological costs evolution in medium time scale;
• maintain a close communication level with the end-users, grouped in an User Advisory Board, to acknowledge and to check project consistency with the end-users requirements.

In the study, the cost subject will be mainly addressed regarding the production costs, but as the question of costs of use is significant for the future users of the open architecture - but also a very complex information to establish and an industry sensitive information - the consortium partners will propose ways to answer, in common or separately outside the frame of the OPARUS project, regarding any question raised by end-users, stakeholders and the European Commision experts during the workshops.

This study is also considering privacy and ethical issues thanks to involvement of CNIL relay - Safran Group.

For additional information, please contact with Mr. Olivier Reichert (Project Coordinator) at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it