CROSS-FLIGHT
Cross-cueing Stratospheric Flights
Scheda del progetto
The Project aims to implement innovative image analysis, cross-cueing and replanning solutions and algorithms to be validated aboard small stratospheric platforms. The aim is to enable tip&cue applications, i.e., automatic coordination techniques between satellite platforms, stratospheric platforms, or a combination of the two. Through such techniques, aircraft identify targets of interest and share them with each other by planning the execution of more accurate, faster and potentially continuous land observation.
Contacts:
Victor Miherea, victor.miherea@stratobotic.com
The project results will require further development and validation activities before being proposed commercially.
The main hurdles to be overcome at this stage, some of which will already arise during the project, will be:
- refinement and stabilization of the image analysis software for the identification of events/targets of interest in order to build a full-fledged library;
- extension of the previously mentioned library to the identification of moving targets, e.g., aircraft, trucks and small ships, which are difficult to identify and for which it is then necessary to assess not only the position but also the direction and speed;
- identify and integrate the best on-board electronic systems capable of accommodating these tools following the continuous evolution of the market and technology;
- set up the appropriate communication lines necessary for data exchange between platforms; - interface properly with ground systems, the Mission Control Center, and, possibly, the customer's infrastructure and web channels and IT tools.
The project will have important scientific and technological spin-offs because Stratobotic will study and test innovative data and image analysis algorithms. In addition, the operational experimentation that will be carried out at the end of the project in the stratosphere will grant the opportunity to validate the methodologies at an unprecedented level of detail and representativeness.
This will be the first case, or one of the first, of execution of near-real-time land-observation missions performed by coordinating a swarm of stratospheric platforms and the first example of a study for coordination between stratospheric platforms and micro-nano satellites, functional for the realization of multi-orbits applications.