• H2020
• Industrial Leadership
• ICT

CATEC, located in Seville, Spain, has developed a pioneering technology which allows the use of airborne robots and small unmanned aircraft for industrial contact inspections.

AEROX is a further development in the use of drones and airborne robots for different industrial tasks, such as inspections in factories or aqueducts.

Antidio Viguria, head of avionics and systems division in CATEC, said that the new drone “represents a great step further for the use of this type of aerial robots in different tasks, as they not only could see from the air but also touch and feel”.

It is not only possible to see and collect data from the air, but also to minimise time, resources, and the health implications of working at height.

The development has been selected as one of ten candidates for the Innovation Radar Prize 2017, launched by the European Commission, to identify Europe’s top future innovators and their innovations to be applied in the market.

Competing in the ‘Industrial Enabling Tech’ category, the award aims to recognise new technologies and components, developed with EU-funding, which have industrial relevance as well as the potential to enable the emergence of new applications.

Viguria added: “The Innovation Radar Prize can be a great opportunity for us to increase our knowledge of this technology and to arouse the industry’s interest in exploiting it.”