Autoprotection – Anti piracy protection solution

Autoprotection is a project managed by Sagem and with the participation of Safran, Vnavy, Lacroix, ECA Robotics, AMEFO, Thales, BV, ENSM and SOFRESUD. The Autoprotection project’s goal is to develop a complete solution to be integrated on civilian ships in order to improve their protection against terrorist aggression or piracy. The solution offers a non-lethal and graduated response to any aggression against those ships.

The system allows to:

• detect, identify and analyse the boats’ behaviour from a long range thanks to the radar data and infrared imaging
• dissuade with light projectors and acoustics cannon
• protect the footbridge
• prevent the boarding thanks to outside smokes and repulsive water sprays
• prevent burglaries with watertight security doors and indoor smokes.

For the Autoprotection project, our client, ECA Robotics, asked us to make some developments:

• Drivers for embedded sensors and instruments (AIS & GPS Receivers, Smoke cases, etc.).
• A simulator of the protection system. The simulator integrates the sensors and actuators embedded in the ship in order to simulate its behaviour and to visualize the ship movements’ effects on the maritime object tracking.
• A middleware allowing the data transfer between the system and all the partners
• Servo-control algorithms of some of the turrets embedded in the system (SearchLight, Acoustics Cannons)

You can find more information about our knowledge on maritime detection object tracking on the following page.