The Coordinator of TESTUDO, CERTH / ITI / M4D group, together with the Visual Computing Lab (VCL), has organised the inauguration of this Horizon Europe (HE) Innovation Action (IA) project at its premises in Thessaloniki! The project entitled as ‘Autonomous Swarm of Heterogeneous resource in infrastructure protection via threat prediction and prevention -TESTUDO’ engages a total of 20 partner Organisations from 10 EU and 2 non-EU countries. In this context, TESTUDO project aims to respond to threats that currently impact the safety of critical infrastructures in European societies, by contributing to the secure provision and utilisation of essential public goods, such as water, electricity, energy, and transportation.
The kick-off meeting was attended by European Commission representatives who welcomed the partners and presented useful information about the European Research Executive Agency’s overarching policy, with a particular focus on the “Civil Security for Society” initiative cluster to which the project belongs.
At the kickoff meeting, a wide range of technical solutions to be developed was presented. These included synergetic operations involving unmanned assets and fixed resources for continuous 24/7 surveillance, enhanced AI-based cognitive models for threat identification and predictive intelligence, as well as the introduction of innovative HMI (Human-Machine Interface) technologies designed to advance situational awareness.
The project will overall last for 36 months, until September 2026, while it will adopt three development circles, during which all phases will be concluded with the performance validation of every prototype, under the scope of an actual demonstration within the context of pilot use cases.