In December 2022, Frontex challenged industry to propose innovative and cost-efficient solutions to detect, track and identify low flying objects. In reply to its Prize Award Contest, the European border and coast guard agency received 21 unique proposals that have been evaluated for their conceptual content. Now, Frontex has revealed the 10 laureates of this first – out of three – phases. The competition continues and the successful proposals will be now assessed for their technical capacity.
Launched on 19 December 2022, this initiative is Frontex’ first Prize Award, and it aims to encourage the development of innovative concepts and technological solutions to detect, track and identify low flying objects (LFO) crossing EU borders. These include a broad set of aerial platforms that operate in low-level airspace from piloted ultralight and conventional aircraft to remotely piloted aircraft systems. The additional challenge was to propose new cost-efficient, scalable, and integrated capabilities, aligned with the needs and requirements of the European border and coast guard community.
A total of 21 proposals were submitted to the contest’s first phase, originating from 11 EU countries: France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, Netherlands. At this initial stage, the participants furnished a white paper outlining their proposed concepts, accompanied by a description of technological solutions for detecting LFOs at the EU land borders.
Overall, Frontex says the submitted proposals met and exceeded the evaluation criteria defined in the Rules of Contest, presenting comprehensive innovative multi-layer and multi-sensor architectures, with various active and passive detection systems that, when combined, have the potential to detect various types of LFOs.
After careful consideration and assessment by the Evaluation Committee, Frontex has announced the companies that submitted the top 10 best-ranked proposals, listed below in alphabetical order:
- Advanced Protection Systems S.A.
- CS Group
- DAT CON d. o. o.
- Dedrone GmbH
- FLIR Systems AB (Teledyne FLIR)
- Hemeria Airship
- Marduk Technologies
- Naval Group SA
- OPTIX JSC
- Technofita Adria d. o. o.
Each of the laureates is awarded a prize of EUR 10,000 and an invitation to the second phase of the contest. For the laureates who accept the invitation to phase two, the proposals will be assessed for technical capacity. The top five proposals of the second phase will be eligible to receive a prize award of EUR 50,000 each while the top three will be invited to phase three which will include an operational trial. In the finals, the three competitors will prepare, deploy, and operate their proposed technological solutions for three weeks of operational testing in Estonia, scheduled for autumn 2023.
Read more about the project at Frontex
