CLOSE-SEARCH project: bringing EGNOS to the UAVs

The CLOSE-SEARCH Kick-off Meeting took place on February, 22nd 2010 in Castelldefels, at the IG. Participants from all the Consortium members attended this event, in which the project was presented and each partner had the opportunity to introduce its company to the rest of the team. The successful performance of the meeting lead to the achievement of the first CLOSE-SEARCH milestone.

 

The goal of CLOSE-SEARCH is to integrate in a small Unmanned Aircraft (UA), a thermal imaging sensor and a multi-sensor BA/RINS/GPS-EGNOS-based navigation system with an Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (AIM) capability, to support the search component of search-and-rescue (SAR) operations in remote, difficult-to-access areas and/or in time critical situations. The proposed integration will result in a HW & SW prototype that will demonstrate an end-to-end functionality. For reasons of manoeuvrability the proposed UA will be a helicopter.

It is also the goal of CLOSE-SEARCH to demonstrate the added value of a future multi-constellation augmented GNSS configuration, like Galileo/GPS-EGNOS or Galileo/GPS-SoL.

Find out more about the project and news on the specific project web page .

The CLOSE-SEARCH project in the Galileo Application Days (Brussels)

The Galileo Application Days, organized by the GNSS Supervisory Authority, took place on March, 3rd-4th-5th in Brussels, Belgium, and aimed to explore the world of innovation in the GNSS field. The assistants got an overview of the GNSS test beds, applications, development support and other services through exhibitions, conferences, meetings...

CLOSE-SEARCH was part of it by setting a stand in the Application Village, in which a UA, helicopter type, was included – any passer-by could get the look-and-feel of the Project by reaching its stand. Moreover, on March, 4th the CLOSE-SEARCH project was presented in the Parallel Sector Sessions by Ismael Colomina, providing a short vision of the project to the audience.