SPADE – multi-purpoSe Physical-cyber Agri-forest Drones Ecosystem for governance and environmental observation

Monitoring plant populations, applying pesticides or analyzing forest stands - drones are already in use today as flying helpers in many areas of agriculture, livestock farming and forestry.

The SPADE project aims to set up an intelligent ecosystem for the development of drones and unmanned aerial objects that takes into account governance requirements in addition to technical aspects and promotes the development of sustainable digital services for the application of drones in diverse fields of use. For this purpose, a digital platform will first be created to make the use of drones more accessible and controllable, and to provide a service channel for value-added services enabled by drones.

Fraunhofer IDMT is involved as a technical partner in the development of various components and systems. These include a Smart Acoustic Sensor that will enable drone applications to reliably detect and analyze acoustic events and scenes on the ground in the future. Fraunhofer IDMT is also developing software components for fast video analysis in the project, which can be used on edge devices directly on the drone. An initial prototype implementation is being carried out as part of the "Livestock" use case for monitoring a flock of sheep on the Greek island of Lesbos.

• Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH), Greece
• Hafenstrom AS, Norway
• Nydor System Technologies SA (NST), Greece
• University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
• Fraunhofer IDMT, Germany
• Fundación del Centro Tecnolóxico de Comunicacións de Galicia (GRADIANT), Spain
• Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação (SPI), Portugal
• University of Oulu, Finland
• Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), Norway
• Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway
• Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Trialog, France
• ECLIPSE FOUNDATION, Germany
• Splorotech SLU, Spain
• bAvenir, s.r.o., Slovakia
• farmB Digital Agriculture S.A., Greece
• Aarhus University, Denmark
• University of Lincoln, UK
• Anysolution SL, Spain
• Mallorcan New Potatoes SAT, Spain
• Cooperativa Agrícola San Bartolomé, Spain

The project is funded under the HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-21 call.

September 2022 – August 2026