Project Title: Advanced multi-UAV and intelligent launching-recovery system for enhancing the search and surveillance continuous operations
Programme: Dual Use Technologies
Proposal Number: DUAL USE/0922/0032
Duration: 01/05/2023 – 30/04/2025
Total Funding: € 388,424
Several European regions, including Cyprus, the Greek islands, Malta, Italy, and Spain, face significant maritime challenges such as boat migration, false distress signals, piracy, and illegal fishing. These challenges result in annual global economic losses exceeding €2.8B and have led to over 24,000 deaths or disappearances in the Mediterranean Sea between 2014-2021. Authorities engaged in Search and Surveillance Operations (SSO) struggle with costly, inefficient, and limited capabilities. The HARESS project aims to address these issues by delivering a cloud-supported autonomous multi-UAV platform for optimizing SSOs. Components include a Multi-UAV system, an intelligent Launching and Recovery platform, and a central command and control center utilizing cloud infrastructure and machine learning algorithms for object detection, recognition, and tracking. The project involves collaboration among three consortium partners to advance the technology from TRL4 to TRL7, demonstrate its effectiveness on a large scale, and establish a comprehensive dissemination and exploitation plan.
Funding Agencies: The project DUAL USE/0922/0032 is funded by the European Union Recovery and Resilience Facility of the NextGenerationEU instrument, through the Research and Innovation Foundation.
HARESS possesses the exclusive capability to revolutionize traditional human-operated processes of SSOs for civilian maritime (coastal and sea) applications into fully autonomous missions, thereby unlocking new horizons with a diverse array of features. The consortium brings together leading experts in engineering, robotics, unmanned systems, image and signal processing, communications, and cloud infrastructure to implement and enhance the innovation potential of our technology.
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Host Organisation (HO)
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Partner 1 (PA1)
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Partner 2 (PA2)
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HARESS fosters collaboration among two SMEs (CyRIC & SignalGeneriX) and a research organization (CYENS), leveraging a unique synergy of academic, scientific, technical, and business expertise. This collaboration builds upon successful partnerships in previous R&D projects and shared business interests.
In HARESS, CyRIC plays the central role as the main beneficiary, overseeing the overall project management and coordination, while leading the dissemination and exploitation activities. Additionally, CyRIC is responsible for the design and development of the i-LR platform and multi-UAV system, as well as managing the integration, testing and performance assessment phases of the HARESS project.
CyRIC’s significant investments include:
- State-of-the-art infrastructure
- High-caliber personnel
- Design and development of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles for search and surveillance applications
Through project dissemination activities:
- Unique networking opportunities can arise
- Broadening the company’s R&D profile and activities in relevant fields
- Creating new collaborations for involvement in innovative R&D projects with distinct IPR value
HARESS will enhance CyRIC’s competitiveness in the search and surveillance sector, something that the company is already commercially active.
Explore the most recent dissemination material created by HARESS.
 Posters |
 Leaflets |
 Publications |
 HARESS workshop |
 Conferences |
 News |