Creating and sharing knowledge for telecommunications

Project: Utilização de Balões de Alta-Altitude para Apoio à Decisão em Operações de Combate a Incêndios Rurais

Acronym: EyeInTheSky
Main Objective:
This project aims to design and develop an aerial platform to support communications in emergency situations, while simultaneously providing high-altitude real-time imagery of the fire scenario to ground combat agents.
Considering the recent national incidents during wildfire fight, an improvement opportunity is identified on the process of real-time fire monitoring and mapping. This condition is reflected not only in the fact that, during a wildfire, the current available emergency communication system proves to be fallible, but also because there is a real difficulty on mapping and predicting its propagation fronts.
The aim is to contribute to ground-based fire-fighting agents communication reliability improvement and to provide real-time geotagged imagery to decision-making centers which act and coordinate the means available during the incident.
To this end, the project Eye in the Sky proposes the development of a platform composed of: a high-altitude balloon (HAB), responsible for the rise in altitude of a desired payload; observation and communications payloads, responsible for image collection and communications relay; and a flying wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) carried by the HAB and released at high altitude, responsible for payloads controlled positioning after release when the balloon drifts from the region of interest.
The overall solution will be available as a launch kit, which should include a balloon launch tool (to maximize the field of action during the fire), as well as all the material needed to launch the platform (HAB + UAV + observation and communication payloads) and placing it at high altitude over the area to monitor.
In this project Eye in the Sky (EIS), a research team led by IDMEC, is working in collaboration with researchers from ADAI and IT.
Reference: PCIF/SSI/0103/2018
Funding: FCT
Start Date: 01-01-2020
End Date: 31-12-2022
Team: José Miguel da Silva Bergano, Domingos da Silva Barbosa, António Navarro Rodrigues, Luis Filipe Mesquita Nero Moreira Alves, Rui Luis Andrade Aguiar
Groups: Integrated Circuits – Av
Partners: ADAI - Associação para o Desenvolvimento da Aerodinâmica Industrial, IDMEC - IST Engenharia Mecânica
Local Coordinator: António Navarro Rodrigues
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Links: https://www.fct.pt/apoios/projectos/concursos/incendios_florestais/docs/evento_ipma/painel3/8_WorkshopFCT_IncendiosRurais_EyeInTheSky.pdf

Associated Publications