AI-based tactical situational awareness using swarms of small robots and drones – participation in a technological challenge"

Open

This is the status published by the official source.

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Scope:
Assisting soldiers with robots and drones that can provide accurate tactical situational awareness by using AI becomes essential for soldier protection. This call topic aims to follow on and complement previous activities in the field of hidden threat detection and explore solutions involving various combinations of intelligent robots, drones and sensing technologies for advanced detection and recognition of threats, in view of their avoidance or neutralisation.
These solutions should be tested under realistic scenarios in a comparable and objective manner to reach up to Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 6. For that purpose, each consortium supported through this call topic will benefit from a common testing environment set up as part of a technological challenge and will have to participate in the experiment campaigns organised with this objective.
Beyond defence technologies, this topic also contributes to the STEP objectives as defined in the STEP Regulation in the target investment area of deep and digital technologies.
Targeted types of activities: Generating knowledge, not excluding upstream and downstream activities eligible for research actions.
Indicative budget: EUR 23 000 000 for this topic under the EDF-2026-LS-RA-CHALLENGE call.
Indicative number of proposals to be funded: Several proposals may be funded for this topic.
Range of the financial contribution of the EU per proposal: The requested funding cannot exceed EUR 4 600 000.

Status

Open

Deadline

29 September 2026 (time not stated)

Opens

11 February 2026

Published

22 January 2026

Country

European Union (EU-wide)

Programme

European Defence Fund (EDF)

Funder

European Commission

Official page

Open at the source portal

What applying involves

10 steps, all of them taken from this call's own documents.

Understand the call

• Read the call on the source portal and download its documents
• Write the proposal against the award criteria and thresholds standard for this programme

  described in section 9 of the call document — conditions §5b

• Check the grant's legal and financial set-up standard for this programme

  described in section 10 of the call document . Call document and annexes: Call document Application form templates Standard application form (EDF) — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System Detailed budget table (EDF LS RA) Participant information (EDF) List of infrastructure, facilities, assets and resources (EDF) Actual indirect cost methodology declaration (EDF) Ownership control declaration Ownership control guarantee PRS … — conditions §6

Check you are eligible

• Check every partner is established in an eligible country standard for this programme

  described in section 6 of the call document — conditions §2

• Meet the call's other eligibility conditions standard for this programme

  described in section 6 of the call document — conditions §3

• Be able to show financial and operational capacity standard for this programme

  described in section 7 of the call document — conditions §4

Prepare the documents

• Prepare Part B of the Application Form standard for this programme

  Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System. — conditions

• Complete the detailed budget table standard for this programme

Submit

• Check the submission and evaluation process

  described section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual — conditions §5a

• Submit before the closing date shown above

  The source states the closing day but no closing time — check the portal before the last day. — calls.deadline

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