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The INTERACT Project, funded by the DG-DEFIS of the European Commission and managed by the European Defence Agency (EDA), aims at enhancing the capabilities of European armed forces to safely, effectively and flexibly operate unmanned and manned systems in joint or combined operations. The challenge to achieve this lies in creating overarching interoperability concepts for defence systems in general and unmanned systems in particular. INTERACT proposes to use selected NATO STANAGs to engender compatibility for military systems. But the lack of a promulgated STANAG for UxS (Unmanned Systems) control in an all-domain context is identified as a major gap regarding this endeavour. As a response the INTERACT project is elaborating a set of interoperability concepts and standardisation proposals, which will enable the coordinated deployment of multiple and potential heterogeneous platforms by a single, standardised control station as well as the controlled hand-over of platforms between INTERACT compliant control nodes. The INTERACT solution creates a holistic approach and includes the proposal for concepts and design of a set of interoperable standardized interfaces between subsystems and payloads within an unmanned system (intra-system interoperability) to ease the upgrade and adoption of novel payloads and maintaining and upgrading equipment and components to the state-of-the-art, as well as the proposal for inter-system interface standardization in order to pave the way for future operational concepts where autonomous assets will flexibly operate together in organized heterogeneous UxS teams. Beneath the system interoperability INTERACT will also address the human-machine interaction by proposing a common design solution for standardisable user interfaces. The INTERACT consortium consists of 4 major European RTOs as a core team supported by a strong alliance of 15 representative European defence industries, SMEs and RTOs from 11 different nations.
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