Welcome to the Action Project Web site!

The goal of Prospective Research Program ACTION (2007-2015) was to develop and implement a multidrone software architecture on heterogeneous autonomous vehicles allowing them to cooperate for their mission achievement in a dangerous, partially unknown and dynamic environment. The project was centered on the upgrade of the performance of the localization of targets and friends under communication constraints. Research focused on the development of data fusion and decision-making functions including mission planning and supervision.

Six scientific air-ground and air-sea demonstrations of growing complexity were performed between 2012 and 2015. The demonstrations were representative of the operational context: infrastructure surveillance mission with aerial and ground autonomous vehicles (AAV, AGV), securing mission and fight against water pollution mission with aerial, underwater and surface vehicles (AAV, AUV, ASV). The decisional architecture was evaluated statistically, by simulation and on the field. The last demonstration end 2015 involved the cooperation of 2 AAVs from ONERA, 3 AGVs from LAAS, 3 AGVs from the French Defence procurement agency DGA, 1 simulated AAV and 3 simulated AGVs. The generic multidrone software architecture embedded on each vehicle allowed the team to achieve the patrols while reacting to disruptive events: delays on rendezvous, localization of non-cooperative targets leading to vehicles gathering and target tracking, loss of vehicles, loss of communication for vehicles...

The successive studies based on the different scenarios allowed the architecture to be evaluated in a more and more global way, through four themes of growing complexity:

• Theme 1: cooperation within a two-vehicle team;
• Theme 2: information sharing among three vehicles;
• Theme 3: coordination of two heterogeneous teams;
• Theme 4: flotilla management.

The themes were illustrated on six scenarios:

• Scenario I (theme 1): 1 AAV + 1 UGV; // demonstrated the 25th of October, 2012 (French information)
• Scenario II (theme 1): 1 AAV + 1 AUV; // demonstrated the 24th of September, 2014 (French information)
• Scenario III (theme 2): 1 AAV + 2 AGVs; // demonstrated the 8th of October, 2013 and the 22th of April, 2014 (French information)
• Scenario IV (theme 2): 1 AAV + 1 AUV + 1 ASV; // demonstrated the 24th of September, 2014 (French information)
• Scenario V (theme 3): 2 AAVs + 2 AGVs; // demonstrated the 18th of Juin, 2015 (French information)
• Scenario VI (theme 4): AAV and AGV flotilla. // demonstrated the 18th 1 19th of October, 2015 (French information)

Contact: Magali (dot) Barbier (arobase) onera (dot) fr

PEA Action is funded by DGA (Délégation Générale pour l'Armement, French Defence procurement agency); the project owner is the MI expertise centre (Maîtrise de l'Information). As this programme is multidisciplinary, other DGA expertise centres are involved in the supervision of the work: Bourges and Angers expertise centres from TT (Techniques Terrestres) and Toulon and Brest expertise centres from TN (Techniques Navales).

Project Team

ONERA - DCSD Département Commande des Systèmes et Dynamique du Vol
Centre de Toulouse
BP 74025 - 2, avenue Edouard-Belin
F-31055 TOULOUSE Cedex 4
E-mail: FirstName.SurName@onera.fr
Alexandre AMIEZ - Magali BARBIER - Patrick BECHON - Paul CHAVENT - Pierre ESCALAS - Vincent FUERTES - Jean-François GABARD - Thibault GATEAU - Christophe GRAND - Guillaume INFANTES - Charles LESIRE - Alain PIQUEREAU - Henry de PLINVAL - Catherine TESSIER - Yoko WATANABE

ONERA - DTIM Département Traitement de l'Information et Modélisation
BP 72 - 29, avenue de la Division Leclerc
F-92322 CHATILLON Cedex
E-mail: FirstName.SurName@onera.fr
Guy LE BESNERAIS - Martial SANFOURCHE

LAAS/CNRS Laboratoire d'Architecture et d'Analyse des Systèmes
7, avenue du Colonel Roche
F-31077 Toulouse Cedex 4
E-mail: FirstName.SurName@laas.fr
Simon LACROIX-