CATEC is participating in this innovative European project as one of its technology partners and beneficiaries, contributing its extensive experience and expertise in autonomous robotics, computer vision, AI and the validation of technological solutions in real-world environments.
During the visit, accompanied by the Director-General for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship and Continuing Education, Francisco Javier González Navarro, he was able to see our facilities and technological capabilities at first hand, as well as attend several specially organised technology demonstrations and learn about some of the most significant innovation projects in which we are currently involved.
The article, entitled ‘Autonomous UAV Pipeline Landing via Depth–LiDAR Fusion in GNSS-Denied Refineries’, addresses the solution to a very specific industrial inspection problem: landing a UAV with precision on pipelines in refineries without GNSS, where occlusions, interference and reflective surfaces make perception particularly challenging.
Our technology centre has collaborated on this initiative with a consortium formed by the companies Integración Tecnológica Empresarial (ITE), Surcontrol and IOVI - Intelligent Vision, providing infrastructure and capabilities to support the technological challenges of each partner and being directly involved in the technical execution and experimental validation of the prototype developed.
The initiative has concluded its development with final trials and tests carried out in France, which have validated a new advanced system for the inspection and maintenance of large infrastructures for the Oil & Gas sector through the combination of aerial robotic platforms, non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques and digital tools.
Our colleague Javier Garrido (in the picture), PhD student and Senior Avionics Systems Engineer, participated a few days ago in an interesting online webinar, organized by Euro Clusters, about Industry 5.0, with examples of European projects in robotics, 3D printing, drones, etc.
In early August, CATEC once again attended the MRS (Multi-robot Systems) Summer School at the Czech Technical University (CTU) of Prague. There, our colleagues Irene Espigado Delgado and Alexandre Rodríguez Rendo enjoyed an intense week of learning and networking, sharing interesting conversations with other aerial robotics researchers.
CATEC is part of the consortium of a new project that seeks to develop a unified and cyber-secure control system, capable of remotely managing and coordinating the operation of multiple robotic platforms of different brands and capabilities.