SWARM AI Chair: Expleo and ESTACA join forces to develop swarms of intelligent drones for the environment
Expleo and ESTACA are proud to announce the creation of a research and training Chair dedicated to the optimization of heterogeneous drone swarms, christened SWARM IA.
The Chair aims to develop innovative solutions in the field of collaborative UAVs, based on artificial intelligence, data fusion and digital twins.
Objective: to advance research and train a new generation of engineers and researchers able to design, pilot and operate swarms of autonomous UAVs in complex environments, to meet major environmental and industrial challenges (fire detection, gas leaks, critical infrastructure monitoring, etc.).
Wednesday September 4 saw the official signing of the SWARM IA Chair, in the presence of Damien Lasou, Managing Director of Expleo France, a worldwide engineering, technology and consulting firm, Denis Bertrand, Director of ESTACA, a post-baccalaureate engineering school specializing in transport and sustainable mobility, and Jean-Michel Fourgous, President of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines conurbation, committed to supporting forward-looking technological projects in the region.
The signature marks the start of strategic cooperation between the academic, industrial and regional sectors, to drive innovation for more intelligent, collaborative UAVs in the public interest.
SWARM AI: swarms of UAVs and collaborative robots
The use of drones in industrial applications such as infrastructure inspection, environmental monitoring and natural disaster management is growing fast. However, in certain situations, such as fire in a contained environment or a toxic gas leak, action needs to be fast, coordinated, autonomous and intelligent.
Hence the SWARM AI Chair: designing swarms of drones able to share data, make decisions in real time and interact with their environment. Thanks to the integration of an AI-powered digital twin, the UAVs will be able to predict the evolution of observed phenomena (smoke, heat, gas dispersion, etc.), optimize their trajectories and better support human intervention.
A Chair for 3 major programs
The SWARM IA Chair is based on three major technological pillars which, together, will enable swarms of drones to cooperate, understand their environment and react in real time to complex situations:
- Collaboration: getting drones and robots to work together by fusing heterogeneous data.
The challenge is to enable UAVs to share a common vision of their spatial-temporal environment and mission, using data fusion and consensus algorithms, to move in a coordinated, autonomous and secure way, even off-grid.
- Artificial Intelligence: using AI to understand and interpret the environment and optimize missions.
- Here, the challenge is to deploy an AI solution that enables drones and robots to interpret what they see, adapt to the unexpected and optimize their missions in real time, thanks to learning models, like an on-board collective brain.
- Digital twin: dynamic environmental simulation
The challenge is to create a virtual copy of real-life, dynamic situations in which drones will need to act, by modeling the evolution of phenomena (smoke, heat, wind) to optimize their trajectory and accurately adapt missions in real time.
“The SWARM IA Chair embodies a strong ambition for Expleo and its innovation teams: to bring about a new generation of drones and robots capable of working in teams and interacting intelligently in real time in complex industrial contexts. We believe strongly in this partnership with ESTACA’s faculty and future engineering graduates. We are confident that the combination of smart sensors, on-board AI and digital twins will enable swarms of heterogeneous UAVs and robots to tackle major challenges with greater responsiveness, safety and efficiency, such as tracking the spread of a fire, detecting a gas leak, inspecting critical infrastructure”, said Damien Lasou, Managing Director France at Expleo.
“For an engineering school like ESTACA, with over 100 years’ experience in mobility issues, and specifically more than 20 years of experience in connected, intelligent and sustainable mobility, working on a project involving swarms of drones and heterogeneous robots with environmental applications is a remarkable opportunity. The SWARM IA Chair will make the most of our research expertise for joint projects that will also benefit our students’ training in AI and digital twins applied to transport”, said Denis Bertrand, Director of ESTACA.
“When two major players in our region, Expleo in engineering and technology services for manufacturers, and ESTACA in the field of higher education and research, join forces to develop a mobility project serving the environment in the broadest sense, we can only be proud to be at their side and look forward to the results they produce in the months and years to come”, declared Jean-Michel Fourgous, President of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines conurbation.
