European Commission
European Defence Fund
2023 – 2027
5 M€
Miguel Freixo
Project website
The CONVOY (ClOud iNtelligent explosiVe detectiOn sYstem) project addresses the EDF-2022-LS-RA-CHALLENGE-DIGIT-HTDP call on the development of unmanned ground and aerial systems for hidden threats detection.
Due to the evolution of the defence context in Europe and the world, EU land forces need to operate in high intensity environments facing potential technically advanced threats such as Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) or landmines. It is one of the major causes of casualties of EU defence forces and countering these hidden threats is essential to protect soldiers and enhance operational efficiency.
Scenarios typically encountered by armed forces, such as route clearance, represent a challenge and existing technology, where single detections are performed, does not provide the expected detection confidence to ensure soldier protection.
The CONVOY project is based on the development and integration of a CONVOY demonstrator that will evolve through the participation in four evaluation campaigns. The CONVOY demonstrator will consist of a set of different integrated components based on the following guidelines:
Multi-sensor approach. CONVOY will be combining eight different sensor technologies: GPR, metal detector, UGV Autonomy sensors, THZ Sensor, LIDAR, IR-Laser Sensor, Quantum Magnet., EO/IR Camera.
Multi-platform approach. CONVOY will be deploying those networked sensors on different platforms on the battlefield including two unmanned aerial systems, one medium and five small size unmanned ground systems, and a manned ground vehicle.
Artificial Intelligence and Information fusion. CONVOY will integrate all the information collected by this sensory network using building blocks providing information fusion powered by Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence will be also used for Mission Planning and Platform Tasking.
Integration into/with Command and Control Systems. CONVOY will integrate both the Battle Management System (BMS) for the Squad and the Dismounted Soldier System (DSS) C2 for the combatants.
Tactical Cloud. The best environment to facilitate CONVOY approach for integration of different components, subsystems and building blocks, is the CONVOY Tactical Cloud which will provide a shared service space across federated platforms by distributed micro service architectures.
Open Architecture and Standards. The proposed architecture establishes interoperability and standard interfaces as a design principle ensuring the modularity of the components (sensors, platforms, AI building blocks…) and the support to the scalability of the global solution. This in turn allows to integrate existing components and supports the incorporation of components not developed by CONVOY consortium.