Objective
The drone swarm revolution promises to transform industries from defense to disaster relief, yet a fundamental bottleneck prevents its realization. Current systems lack true distributed spatial awareness—the ability for each drone to understand not only its neighbor’s positions but the swarm’s overall distribution. Today’s swarms rely on either centralized coordination or generic protocols that saturate with few units, forcing a tradeoff: accept external dependencies like GPS, or endure non-scalable swarms under network overload. Regarding distributed systems, sophisticated drones operate on primitive infrastructures, like smartphones trying to function on dial-up connections.
AEROSENSE delivers an avionics system purpose-built for distributed spatial awareness and clock synchronization without external infrastructure by integrating Ultra-Wideband (UWB) transceivers with custom protocols operating immediately above the physical layer. Building on advances from our ERC Starting Grant, we implement distributed consensus algorithms that let each drone estimate relative positions as well as global swarm properties such as centroid and spatial moments. Unlike existing approaches that route distributed algorithms through centralized layers, AEROSENSE provides native distributed computation as a network service.
Our proof-of-concept focuses in four areas: embedded firmware, theoretical refinement, flight testing, and business development. We employ commercial UWB modules for real-time performance (microcontrollers), while refining protocols with graph-theoretic methods and multi-channel architectures to ensure scalability. Market pathways include licensing, consultancy, and an open-source ecosystem. An iterative “fail fast, fix fast” process drives near-weekly flight tests. Initial demonstrations target 10-drone swarms—the current market sweet spot—i.e. the critical step toward future 100+ unit deployments. AEROSENSE brings swarm coordination into an operational reality
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.
- social sciences political sciences political transitions revolutions
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics autonomous robots drones
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering information engineering telecommunications mobile phones
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Keywords
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)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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.
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.
Funding Scheme
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.
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
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-POC
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
18071 Granada
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.