INSERTION

Aerostack2 was partly developed during INSERTION, Inspection and maiNtenance in harSh EnviRonments by mulTI-robot cooperatiON. The project is funded by the Spanish State Research Agency under the 2021 call for knowledge generation projects, and co-funded by the European Union through the ERDF.

• Funder. MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF, EU
• Reference. PID2021-127648OB-C32, the UPM sub-project
• Partners. Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid
• Links. Project website

The project

INSERTION advances the technology that teams of robots need to inspect and maintain installations in harsh environments safely. The teams mix aerial, ground and surface vehicles. The project develops localization for scenes with poor visibility, navigation through clutter, cooperation between the three kinds of vehicle, and control that keeps aerial and surface vehicles steady under disturbances.

Robots in these places take people out of hazardous work and improve working conditions. Target applications include sewers, offshore oil and gas platforms, wind turbines, gas and power tunnels, mines, industrial storage tanks and polluted water bodies.

The project has three global objectives.

• Perception in harsh environments. Robust localization, perception and mapping that keep working in fog, rain or darkness, by combining cameras, LiDAR and radar.
• Navigation and control in complex environments. Control strategies for aerial and surface vehicles in wind gusts, water currents and strong disturbances, for safe autonomous navigation through 3D clutter.
• Multi-robot cooperation. Cooperation between aerial, ground and surface vehicles, from loose swarm-based cooperation to tight cooperation between robots joined by a tether.

Sub-projects

INSERTION is a coordinated project with three sub-projects.

1. Robust localization, mapping and planning in harsh environments, led by the Service Robotics Laboratory of the Universidad Pablo de Olavide. It covers localization, mapping and planning for heterogeneous robots, and their coordination.
2. UAV perception, control and operation in harsh environments, led by CVAR at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. It brings autonomy for single drones and drone teams in GPS-denied areas.
3. Cooperation of USVs and UAVs for inspection in dynamic environments, led by ISCAR at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. It brings surface vehicles, cooperation between heterogeneous robots, and applications in water.

INSERTION builds on COMCISE, an earlier coordinated project on inspection and security missions by drones working with ground robots (RTI2018-100847-C11 and C12). It widens that scope to surface vehicles, harsher environments with poorer visibility, and more complex cooperation between robots.

Aerostack2 in INSERTION

Both CVAR-UPM and the Service Robotics Laboratory at UPO use Aerostack2 to fly the project's aerial fleets, which coordinate with surface vehicles in inspection scenarios. CVAR-UPM's missions for the project are in project_insertion.

Publications

• C. D. R. Pita-Romero, P. Arias-Perez, M. Fernandez-Cortizas, R. Perez-Segui and P. Campoy. Flocking Behavior for Dynamic and Complex Swarm Structures. arXiv:2601.21772, 2026.