Project description
Flapping-wing drones track air quality and noise quietly
Air and noise pollution in cities and industrial areas poses serious health and environmental risks. Monitoring these pollutants is costly, time-consuming, and often limited by the sparse coverage of static sensors. Traditional drones add noise and safety concerns, making accurate sampling difficult in populated areas. Funded by the ERC, the I-BIRDS project will design bio-inspired flapping-wing drones capable of generating high-resolution 3D maps of air quality and noise. Quieter, safer and more efficient than conventional unmanned aerial vehicles, these autonomous drones combine flapping and gliding to cover large areas with precision. Lightweight, soft materials further enhance safety. I-BIRDS promises a cost-effective, scalable and market-ready solution for next-generation environmental monitoring.
Objective
I-BIRDS proposes the development of the first intelligent system capable of generating high-resolution 3D maps of noise and air quality in urban and industrial environments using bio-inspired flapping-wing robots. This system will significantly reduce the cost of manual sampling for noise and pollutant levels, as well as the deployment and maintenance of static sensor networks.
Flapping-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as ornithopters, offer key advantages over conventional propeller-driven drones. They are quieter, safer, and better suited for operations in populated areas. In particular, the use of traditional UAVs is not suitable for noise sampling due to the internal noise generated by the propellers.
I -BIRDS builds on the expertise of the Principal Investigator, who successfully developed ornithopters with an unparalleled level of autonomy, capable of stable and precise flight without human intervention. He also validated models and demonstrated that the combination of flapping and gliding is significantly more efficient than conventional UAV propulsion systems.
With the new system, environmental sampling can be carried out with higher spatial resolution than static methods, at a lower cost—especially across large areas—and with minimal noise and enhanced safety, due to the absence of propellers and the use of low-weight, soft materials.
I-BIRDS aims to increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of previous autonomous flapping-wing prototypes, delivering an innovative and disruptive solution for environmental monitoring. The objective is to integrate and test a fully functional system, obtain operational flight authorisation, and bring a viable product to market within a few months after the project concludes.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics autonomous robots drones
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering sensors
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-POC
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41012 Sevilla
Spain
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