The Regional Minister for Economy and Industry of the Galician Regional Government, María Jesús Lorenzana Somoza, has officially opened CATEC’s headquarters and operational centre in Galicia; facilities located in O Milladoiro, in the municipality of Ames, which house the intensive activity carried out by our technology centre in the Galician region, focusing particularly on the field of drones and autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for application in various sectors of the civil and defence sectors.
The event and tour of the facilities were attended, alongside the Regional Minister, by the Secretary General for Industry and Energy Development, Nicolás Vázquez; the Deputy Delegate of the Government in A Coruña, Julio E. Abalde Alonso; the Mayor of Ames, José Blas García Piñeiro; and the CEO of CATEC, Joaquín Rodríguez Grau, amongst other authorities and representatives from invited institutions and companies.
This Galician office was launched in 2022 as a result of the growing number of projects developed by CATEC in the region between 2015 and 2021, with the aim of providing a more local service to its clients, partners and collaborators in the development of solutions related to systems, aeronautics, space and defence, as well as in R&D projects and technological developments in these areas.
CATEC Galicia currently has a team of 11 highly qualified engineers who are fully integrated into CATEC’s technological units in this field, specialising in GNSS-free navigation algorithms, semantic perception systems for UAS, advanced payload systems with on-board processing, real-time automatic trajectory planning algorithms, and flight permit management for complex operations involving this type of unmanned aircraft, as well as, with a greater focus on defence, in target selection and classification systems, terminal guidance, navigation in GPS-denied environments, and communications in degraded communication environments.
CATEC’s CEO, Joaquín Rodríguez Grau, emphasised that “thanks to the stable and consistent support provided to the aeronautical, space and defence industries by the Galician Regional Government since 2015, we have developed major projects with leading national companies in Galicia, such as Indra, Airbus, Avincis, Telespazio, and we are participating in challenging projects with the Universities of Vigo and A Coruña and with Galician companies such as Sixtema, Aeromedia, Cuatro Digital, Vigsec-Dron and 3Data, which will shape the future of drone and unmanned technologies for civil and defence applications in Galicia”.
Rodríguez Grau added that “at CATEC, we see our future in the region as being linked to partnerships with leading companies, universities and local businesses, focusing on dual-use solutions in the civilian sector for environmental monitoring, and in defence, focused on operational scenarios, with solutions such as navigation in GPS-denied environments and degraded telecommunications, operational autonomy, drone swarm flight and automatic target tracking, as well as threat detection and neutralisation”.
Projects with Galician companies and universities
Over the past three years of operation in Galicia, CATEC has carried out R&D projects with more than 10 companies in the region and has conducted a research project in collaboration with the University of Vigo (Ourense campus) and the University of A Coruña (Ferrol campus). In fact, CATEC has agreements for work placements with all three Galician universities, taking on several students every year, particularly from engineering disciplines.
Our facilities in Ames comprise over 200 m² of offices and workspaces, which we plan to expand in the coming years with the creation of laboratories and a dedicated workspace for defence projects. Thus, in the medium term over the next five years, CATEC anticipates significant growth in the Galician region, aiming to double its turnover and its workforce of qualified engineers and technicians. Furthermore, our technology centre aims to specialise this site in the development of dual-use technologies with applications in security and defence, both in the field of UAS and the space sector.
