Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COMPASS2020 (Coordination Of Maritime assets for Persistent And Systematic Surveillance)
Período documentado: 2019-05-01 hasta 2021-10-31
The ultimate goal of COMPASS2020 project is demonstration of the capabilities of unmanned vehicles deployed from Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) in the support of regular patrol
missions by:
- Enhancing the coverage of the existing OPVs by means of aerial and underwater unmanned vehicles;
- Increasing the cost effectiveness of maritime surveillance missions;
- Complementing the availability of satellite imagery with imagery taken from aerial platforms operating continuously for long periods of time; and
- Increasing the accuracy and autonomy of pattern/behaviour detection and threat risk analysis.
Important components of COMPASS2020 system of systems were unmanned assets carrying innovative payload for the purposes of target detection & identification deployed in maritime surveillance scenarios. Within this project, tangible improvements in the area launch and recovery of assets were achieved by delivery of capabilities of:
- full operation of fixed-wing UAV from on-board the Oceanic Patrol Vessel based on landing in the netcatcher,
- precise landing on-board the vessel for Vertical Take-Off and Landing UAV,
- simplified launch and recovery of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles,
- detection & localisation of suspicious fast boats or abandonded cargo by means of underwater acoustic sensing installed in the AUV,
In September 2021, COMPASS2020 delivered project final demonstration, which allowed to present the stakeholders technical capabilities of all systems and validation of this system of systems from the perspective of end-users.
Employment of persistent surveillance assets as in COMPASS2020 reduces the End-User need to rely on satellite data, which are usually provided at limited rate due to the limitations related to satellites’ orbit and revisit time. The COMPASS2020 project showed how effective aerials assets are and that the capability of having multiple deployable assets on request (whenever required) instead of when available, allows faster assessment of situations, enables the possibility of planning suitable response actions to simultaneous events even in the case of not having enough manned resources available, and allows for continuous operations since operators’ swaps are performed on the control centre and do not have to come back to the harbour.