SURveillance of InfrastruCtures (energy and transport) and environment, with long endurAnce remoTEd piloted air systems – SURICATE

The project is organized in 4 main tasks:
The first task will consist in defining the needs:
- Real scenarios definition, proposed by end-users (SNCF and EDF),
- Airworthiness and safety constraints study.
- UAV system overall architecture definition.

The second task will consist in defining the mission chain of the UAV system, with a focus on:
- on-board sensors,
- video processing (particularly image enhancement and object of interest detection),
- video compression,
- video exploitation on ground

The third task will consist the definition and the optimization of the different data-links involved in the scenarios. In particular:
- Terrestrial Data Links study and optimization
- Satellite Data Links definition
- Hybrid (terrestrial/satellite) optimisation

The last task will consist in evaluating the proposed solution:
- Integration and first evaluation - mission chain integration and test in laboratory
- Live Demonstration

WP2: needs analysis, system analysis
WP3.1: video pre-processing technics analysis (scene interpretatione), raw video (2 HD flux + KLV meta-data) recorder definition and realisation
WP3.2:
. Analysis of a combined approaches (onboard video compression with subsampling combined with image super-resolution technic on-ground)
. development of a solution of encoding by region of interest, analysis of decoding Open HEV technic
WP3.3: Human presence automatic detection development
WP3.4: Analysis of sensors finalised
WP4:
. Analysis of usable LOS coincepts
. Chanel simulator, linear waveform receptor, mesh-coded waveform
WP6: Suricate Web site

Airbus will use SURICATE as a reference for the use of UAS solutions in a civil environment.
Mastering mission chain and UAS architecture, in order to consolidate current position in unmanned air systems is of most importance for Airbus. Moreover, Airbus will exploit the algorithmic results of the project to reinforce its algorithmic expertise for surveillance systems.
For IRIT-INPT/ENSEEIHT, the main benefits are to improve its expertise on satellite and aeronautical communications for UAV applications. The SURICATE project is a major opportunity to work on a real system implementation and to have practical insights to propose efficient communication solutions in this context
SNCF will use SURICATE to increase traffic safety and minimize delays to passengers. Because of the specific requirements of rail network with regards of reliability and availability, SNCF needs to develop the use of non intrusive surveillance and UAV is one of the most efficient system to reach this objective.
Institut Mines-Telecom (IMT) / Télécom ParisTech indents to strengthen its expertise and increase its visibility in video processing and compression, and gain further knowledge in the application domains of UAV and surveillance. The experience gained as a result of the participation in this project will be exploited in future national and international collaborative research projects. The results of the SURICATE project will be used by Thales Alenia Space to provide concrete elements for the ongoing discussions on the use of the 5GHz frequency band for the UAV C&C link in unsegregated airspace with current stakeholders.
VITEC, as a leading provider of encoding, decoding, and transcoding video solutions will be in a good position to exploit the results of the project. Several branches of VITEC’s products portfolio will benefit from the results of the project

. Bilel Raddadi, Nathalie Thomas, Charly Poulliat, Marie-Laure Boucheret, Benjamin Gadat, « On an efficient equalization structure for aeronautical communications via a satellite link », IEEE Workshop on Selected Topics in WiMob, Octobre 2014, Larnaca, Chypre.
. Riegl User conference Hong Kong=> UAV: a new tool for railway infrastructure monitoring. Use of Riegl VUX-1 for vegetation control (Mai 2015)
. Forum 1520 Sotchi 2015 => UAV for infrastructure maintenance : A new tool for railway infrastructure monitoring and asset : Juin 2015

The objective of the SURICATE project - SURveillance of InfrastruCtures (energy and transport) and environment, with long endurAnce remoTEd piloted air systems - is to deploy a UAV system for automatic searching or surveillance on a given extensive infrastructure, like energy, transport or communication network.
The project aims to solve some technological key challenges, and also some regulatory challenges, and to test in real conditions the automatic searching / monitoring process.

The scope of the project is to study the interest of using Unmanned Aerial Systems for civil applications, two of them being:
* the surveillance of railways (for SNCF particularly), in order to figh against malicious acts and cables theft.
* the other one the inspection of high voltage electric cables (for EDF, ERDF, RTE, and also SNCF).
Some other applications are also addressed, like environment surveillance and pollution detection.

The corresponding market is huge with several tens of thousands of km of cables or rails to be inspected in France only and operators looking for innovative and cheaper solutions than what is available today.

Proving the feasability of an efficient solution based on UAVs at the end of this project could pave the way for very promising new markets for UAS use.

However, introducing UAS into a civil / commercial marketplace requires to render the UAS a viable, cost effective and regulated alternative to existing resources, and many technological and regulatory key challenges have to be solved. Particularly, the following topics will be adressed in the SURICATE project.
* Mission chain: type of sensors, algorithms for detection and tracking of objects of interest, video compression
* Communication, with LOS and SATCOM data-links, using civil frequencies and medium bandwith systems.
* Airspace regulation

The final objective of the project is to propose a roadmap for the use of long endurance UAS for civil market, regarding technical , financial and regulatory aspects. The proposed roadmap should include short (2016), medium (2018) and long (>2020) term issues.

The proposed consortium, leaded by CASSIDIAN, is composed of complementary expertises, mixing industrial (CASSIDIAN, Thales Alenia Space), SME (VITEC), university/rechearch institute (ENSEEIHT, Telecom ParisTech) and end-users (EDF, SNCF) teams.