The Project

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About

Funded from the European Union’s Preparatory Action for Defence Research (PADR programme), the INTERACT Project enhances the capabilities of European armed forces to safely and effectively operate unmanned systems together with manned systems in joint or combined operations. The project will deliver the effective means to ensure the interoperability and standardisation of different unmanned systems, equipment, components and procedures in order to maximise benefit and optimise adoption and integration of unmanned systems in the operation of armed forces.

  • Acronym: INTERACT
  • Title: INTERoperability Standards for Unmanned Armed ForCes SysTems
  • Call identifier: PADR Call US-03-2019
  • Maximum Foreseen EU Contribution: 1.500.000 €
  • Project duration: 24 months
  • Start Date: 1st June 2021

The INTERACT Solution

The development of an interoperable open architecture for mobile, unmanned systems (land, air and water) by the INTERACT project provides a strategic value for both – operational end-users and industry. The ability to make the unmanned systems interoperable i.e. exchange data and information from various systems on one hand and ensuring interchangeability across system payloads in a flexible manner on the other hand, will enable the armed forces to react comprehensively to rapidly changing requirements.

In brief, the INTERACT solution:

  • Will enable a smoothly adoptable composition of systems and teams (both manned and unmanned).
  • Will facilitate that required resources can be exchanged rapidly and reallocated.
  • System downtimes will be avoided or reduced by optimally distributing and exploiting systems or system parts.

All the above can apply within armed forces units, between different armed forces units or service branches but conceptually also across national forces. Lastly, standardized interfaces for human-machine interaction can achieve continuity in the handling of the systems with positive effects on the certification, training and relevance of the assets.

Project’s Objective

The INTERACT project will propose a set of interoperability standards for military unmanned systems which will be compatible across the domains of:

  • IT services;
  • Data;
  • Data Links; and
  • Engineering Procedures.

These interoperability standards will be aggregated and integrated into an interoperable open architecture of unmanned systems. As such, INTERACT
defines the first step towards life cycle interoperability, which is a critical strategic level for competitiveness of European defence industry and an essential enabler to provide European armed forces with information superiority and decision dominance over adversaries. More specific, the INTERACT Objectives are:

Interoperable Open Architecture

INTERACT aims to offer to the EU and the European Armed Forces an interoperable open architecture with a set of interoperability standards, to better plan and operate unmanned systems in military missions. The unmanned systems industry in Europe will benefit as INTERACT enables the industry to build their current and future developments of unmanned systems on the basis of an Interoperable Open Architecture with common interoperability standards for unmanned systems.

This project has received funding from European Union’s Preparatory Action for Defence Research under grant agreement No. 884270.
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