About SEAWINGS
THE CONCEPT
Fast deployment and intervention at sea are critical in several defence scenarios and manned and unmanned aerial vehicles are commonly used for quick reconnaissance and response in these situations. The development of autonomous vehicles that bring together speed, flexibility and energy efficiency is, therefore, of critical importance.
SEAWINGS is a defence project funded under the European Defence Fund, action EDF-2021-OPEN-R-SME-2. The project aims at the development of a new class of military surveillance drones – Unmanned WIG Vehicles (UWV) – designed and built as wing-in-ground effect vehicles designed to operate in the sea/air interface.
SEAWINGS proposes the development of wing-in-ground effect vehicles (WIG vehicles) designed to increase strategic preparedness and to perform defence-related operations and missions in Europe. These vehicles can provide key advantages due to a unique set of characteristics: speed and energy efficiency; very high payloads; inexpensive; long range; reduced infrastructure for take-off and landing; and stealthy.
Examples of WIG crafts are already available, such as the AirFish 8. SEAWINGS aims to enhance research on this technology and explore its possible use and application for security and defence, especially in remote areas.
In addition, it offers the EU the possibility to enhance the know-how and foster subsequent development in this technological field, thus providing the EU military forces with innovative in-house solutions to support and enhance the EU maritime capabilities for a range of operations connecting ground, naval and aerial assets.
SEAWINGS conducts a series of complementary research, simulation, and assessment activities to confirm and demonstrate its potential capabilities for a range of well-defined military and defence scenarios, such as:
- Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)
- Search and Rescue (SAR)
- Support to Special Operations
- Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW)
- Logistics and Resupply.
SEAWINGS proposes to create and improve a potentially disruptive technology for defence, demonstrate the feasibility of a new class of autonomous drones and demonstrate its capabilities in representative environments.
R&D of the WIG vehicle
A combination of basic and applied research activities are aimed at establishing specifications for WIG vehicles to be successfully operated as drones:
- Initial basic research includes computer simulations, fluid dynamics studies both for the aerodynamic and for the hydrodynamic phases of operation (take-off and landing), research & development of advanced control techniques, operational environment investigations, research on viable energy harvesting methods, additive manufacturing of parts for maintenance and materials. This phase also includes conceptualization, initial design, and scale model experiments.
- Subsequent applied research is addressing novel sensing methods, algorithms, and approaches to endow WIG autonomous vehicles with novel perception and awareness capabilities with low latency and long-range detection and tracking of obstacles and targets. Additionally, the project will explore and test multi-sensory approaches and fusion methods for accurate and real time sea wave perception and modelling. New models will be designed, and a hardware/software-in-the-loop simulation environment will be created for the research and development of fully autonomous AI-based software systems.
Main features of the SEAWINGS drone model to be built for the field tests (for illustration purposes only, the actual model may differ).
SEAWINGS will perform only a partial test in a real environment to assess the feasibility of the solution, and not a prototype testing leading to the commercialization of a final product.
