ECA demonstrated its Unmanned Aerial & Land Vehicles for stand-off mine clearance.

Paris. 18 May 2017. ECA Group demonstrated its new opertational concept for IED / EOD missions consisting in a UAV & UGV collaborating together.

This collaborative concept is aiming at providing intervention teams a better situational awareness and overwatch for executing Explosive Ordonance Disposal (EOD) and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) misisons. The complementarity of the UAV IT180 systems comes especially when the visibility from ground platform (UGV) is limited or when the risk is out of the operator’s view.

This UAV – UGV system is part of ECA Group research program on robotic systems for the future is simplification of mission management . With the IT180 UAV proving a direct view of the UGV “as if the operator was close to the UGV” to help complex manipulation for non-direct view intervention.

It also is working on improvement of autonomous processes with autonomous flight of the IT180 UAV & its automatic camera vision of the IGUANA UGV E – even if the IGUANA UGV is operated thanks to target acquisition mode (also used to follow a mobile target such as a man or a vehicle).

Navigational accuracy is another aim with the IGUANA UGV helped by the UAV IT180 for obstacle anticipation & optimal path finding (also automatic obstacle clearance with the IGUANA UGV).
Interestingly interaction between robots : with the UAV IT180 proving a radio relay for long range operations (also able to drop a mini-UGV COBRA MK2 I).