Starting from November 2019, Leonardo Spa and the Training Command and Application School of the Turin Army have started a project of Open Innovation called “Innovative use of unmanned systems in an operational context”.
In particular, the objective of the first edition of the Contest, divided into four phases over the course of 2020, was to identify feasible innovative solutions to operational problems in the Armed Forces, through the use of unmanned, self-driving systems. , operating in the three domains: land, air and sea.
The competition, aimed at officers attending the Army Application School of Turin, initially saw the presentation of 67 projects focused on systems unmanned of different categories. Each participant, having defined the operational needs, was able to propose one or more solutions to meet the identified needs, which according to their technical-professional experience and university preparation, can allow to improve operational capabilities in the national and foreign contexts in which the Army is called to operate.
The projects, conceived and presented by the Officials attending the Contest, examined multiple operational scenarios: from communications, to mine clearance, through surveillance, to drone research, up to logistics and transport.
During the evaluation phases of the Contest by the examining commission made up of military and company members, in the presence of Eng. Laurent Sissmann, unmanned systems manager of Leonardo Spa, Major General Salvatore Cuoci, commander of the Army Training Institute, underlined: "Occasions like this show how the Application School, responsible for training the ruling class of the Armed Force, is a pole of excellence at the service of the Country System and a forge of ideas, as in this case, in the name of progress and technological development in the defense and security sector ".
Five winning projects selected by the Leonardo committee: “Mini drone for Force Protection at Company level” (cap. Giuseppe William Ciurlia of the 145th course of SM); “PROPHETA Autonomous Radio Bridges Project” (cap. Michele Brunelli of the 145th MS course); “Autonomous UAV- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Artificial Intelligence” (ten. Nicola Giuri of the 197 ° course Engineers); Drone patrolling (ten. Gianmatteo Cannavacciuolo of the 197 ° course of Engineers) and "The Drone Transport" (s.ten. Luigi Macchione of the 198 ° course of Cavalleria).
