Overview

This call comes under the umbrella of the “Commercial Applications of Space-Enabled Robotics” thematic call for proposals.

This call invites proposals for Feasibility Studies and Demonstration Projects for services that combine the use of satellite technologies and robotics for downstream services for energy and utilities.

‘Robotics’ is here defined to include physical robots, autonomous drones, machines and vehicles, and precursory solutions or those that enable these (e.g. perception and navigation systems for autonomous systems, connectivity solutions to enable tele-operated robotics…).

Within the energy and utilities sector, applications of space-enabled robotics are foreseen in relation to supporting energy and utilities infrastructure deployment, operations, inspection, maintenance, and/or decommissioning. Infrastructure in question could be waste and water utility infrastructure, electricity grids, oil and gas platforms, on- or offshore wind farms, telecommunications networks, pipelines, nuclear power plants, solar farms or otherwise.

Scope

Satellite Positioning can provide coarse to high accuracy positioning information to autonomous vehicles, vessels and drones operating in outdoor spaces. This can be used for navigation, geo- and timestamping of collected data, time-synchronisation of networked vehicles, and/or determination of speed and heading. Satellite positioning could be combined with inertial and alternative positioning techniques to support effective navigation. Augmentation of GNSS can offer higher positioning accuracies via solutions such as Galileo HAS (High Accuracy Service), RTK (Real-Time Kinematic), or otherwise, with the selection dependent on the service requirements.

Satellite Communications provide data, video and voice communications and may add value to applications implemented in the following service provision scenarios:

• Environments that have inadequate, unreliable, compromised, or altogether absent mobile cellular connectivity.
• Mobile services that operate across regions with varying cellular connectivity quality (good in certain areas, poor in others…) and require continuous coverage and availability.
• Services that have high security, robustness and resilience requirements may benefit from satellite communications for redundancy in compromised or unforeseen circumstances.

Satellite Earth Observation
It is expected that satellite Earth observation could support autonomous vehicle solutions at the service level, i.e. providing complementary or enabling datasets such as mapping data to support the navigation of the vehicle, vessel or drone, in certain environments. Satellite earth observation data could support with optical, radar, meteorology data, or combinations thereof.

Spaceflight Technology
Spaceflight Technology Spin-Outs are applications of robotics developed for use in space (and other astronomical objects) that also have commercial applications on Earth. This could relate to tele-robotic solutions and algorithms (perception, planning, control…) developed for the autonomy of space robotics that have applications on Earth, or otherwise. Spaceflight Spin-Outs are also considered eligible.