EC-SAFEMOBIL project

Project name: Estimation and Control for Safe Wireless High Mobility Cooperative Industrial Systems 
Project acronym: EC-SAFEMOBIL
Dates: 12.07.2011 - 14.01.2016
Total budget:  6,169,404.00 EUR
Funding:  FP7 - ICT
Grant Agreement number: 288082
 

The project EC-SAFEMOBIL was devoted to the development of sufficiently accurate common motion estimation and control methods and technologies in order to reach levels of reliability and safety to facilitate unmanned vehicle deployment in a broad range of applications. It also included the development of a secure architecture and the middleware to support the implementation.

The focus of the project was on very accurate coupled motion of multiple entities and on distributed safe and reliable cooperation and coordination. The aim was to precisely control hundreds of entities efficiently and reliably, as well as to certify developed techniques to support the exploitation of unmanned platforms in non-restricted areas. This development was validated in multiple scenarios, ranging from landing a fixed-wing UAV on a car through distributed surveillance with multiple UAVs to automated forklifts in industrial warehouses.

Warehousing scenario of EC-SAFEMOBIL project

The focus of the LARICS team in the project was on the automated warehouse scenario, in which we worked on high accuracy marker-less mapping and localization, as well as decentralized control of multiple free-ranging industrial forklifts. In the final demonstrator we showed that our solution is accurate enough for pallet pickup and stacking. We also showed that our finite state machine based decentralized algorithm enables forklifts to negotiate and resolve conflicts, preventing deadlocks in the system.

 

Pallet stacking experiment showcasing high precision of vehicle localization (vehicle and testing area provided by Euroimpianti SPA)

Two forklifts resolving conflict in the testing area (vehicles and testing area provided by Euroimpianti SPA)

The project was realized in coopearation with the following partners:

  1. Fundacion Andaluza para el desarrollo aeroespacial (FADA-CATEC) (ES)
  2. Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft und Raumfahrt EV (DLR) (DE)
  3. Airbus DS GMBH (Astrium) (DE)
  4. Indra sistemas S.A. (ES)
  5. Euroimpianti SPA (IT)
  6. Universidad de Sevilla (ES)
  7. Universitaet Duisburg-Essen (DE)
  8. University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (HR)
  9. Selex ES LTD (UK)

Fp7-IP project EC-SAFEMOBIL takes off

Fp7-IP project EC-SAFEMOBIL takes off

The European Commission, under the 7th Frame Program, has provided funds to perform the project SAFEMOBIL (Estimation and Control for Safe Wireless High Mobility Cooperative Industrial Systems), recognizing the growing importance of the UAV market and applications, which in the case of SAFEMOBIL project, are related to the utilization of autonomous systems in general and UAVs in particular, in many applications that cannot be accomplished with manned systems for including disaster management, the monitoring and measurement of events, rescue missions, particularly in stormy conditions and, in general all mission where there are risks for human beings.

The awarded consortium includes the most important organizations and companies within the European sector and represents and an appropriate mixture of research organizations and key players at the industry level. FADA-CATEC acts as the project leader and the consortium team include DLR, Astrium, Indra, SELEX GALILEO, Euroimpianti, University of Seville, University Duisburg-Essen and University of Zagreb. The EC-SAFEMOBIL project is devoted to the development of sufficiently accurate motion estimation and control methods and technologies in order to reach levels of reliability and safety to facilitate unmanned vehicle deployment in a broad range of applications. It also includes the development of a secure architecture and the middleware to support the implementation. The EC SAFEMOBIL project will develop world first technology demonstrators in several applications dealing with the landing of UAVs on mobile platforms in challenging conditions, the launching of a UAV from a manned vehicle, the surveillance, and the warehousing involving a large number of autonomous vehicles.

Author: Alan Vukić
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