Head of the laboratory

Biography and achivements

Aníbal Ollero obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a PhD in Engineering with an honorary award from the University of Seville. He worked in an engineering department and was an assistant teacher at the University of Seville until 1980. He later became a full professor at the Spanish Universities of Santiago de Compostela, Vigo, Malaga and Seville. In Vigo he was associate teacher and, afterwards, he became Professor. He was also Director of the Department, Secretary and Vice-Director of Research at the School of Engineering. In Malaga he was Professor, Director of the School of Engineering and Head of three Departments.

He was also a ‘stagiere’ at the Laboratoire d’Analyse et d’Architecture des Systèmes (LAAS-CNRS) in Toulouse, France, in 1979, and visiting scientist (1990-1991) at the Robotics Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. Since December 1992 he has been Professor at the University of Seville, where he has been Vice-Director of the School of Engineering. He currently directs the GRVC with more than 75 members in the School of Engineering and in the Association for Industrial Research and Cooperation of Andalusia (AICIA). He is also currently Scientific Director of the Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) with more than 130 members.

His research interests have focused on autonomous aerial systems, robotics and automation, presenting the results in more than 900 publications including journal articles (more than 260), book chapters (63) and conference proceedings. He is author or co-author of 11 books, including a book on computer control ‘Electronic World Award’, a book on robotics, the book ‘Intelligent Mobile Robot Navigation’ (Springer, 2005), a book on ‘Teleoperation and Telerobotics’ (Pearson- Prentice Hall, 2006) and a book on autonomous and distributed systems for vehicle and natural environment applications (2008). He has been the supervisor of 51 PhD Theses, which have received 10 awards, and been invited to deliver more than 150 plenary lectures and talks at congresses, courses and other events. In addition, he is editor or co-editor of 16 books, including Multiple Heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Springer, 2007, translated into Chinese in 2012), with 9 Chapters being co-author of 6, and ‘Cooperating Objects and Wireless Sensor Networks’ (Hermes, 2007) with 6 Chapters being co-author of 3 Chapters. In August 2019 was published by Springer STAR the book Aerial Robotic Manipulation with 27 Chapters, co-edited with Prof. Siciliano, which is the first book on Research and Innovation in this growing area.

In the H2020 Programme he has been responsible for ‘Aerial Robotic system integrating multiple ARMS and advanced manipulation capabilities for inspection and maintenance’ (AEROARMS) with 10 partners from Spain, Germany, France and Switzerland. All these projects have ended with excellent results, becoming world’s first demonstrations of the new technology and receiving several awards. He has been associate coordinator of the Network of Excellence on Cooperating Objects (CONET) and of the FP7 integrated project ‘Platform for the deployment and operation of heterogeneous NETworked cooperating objects’ (PLANET).

In 2018 he benefited from an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council with a budget of €2.5 million for the GRIFFIN project (General compliant aerial Robotic manipulation system Integrating Fixed and Flapping wings to INcrease range and safety). Since December 2019 he is the coordinator of the H2020 project AERIAL-CORE (AERIAL COgnitive integrated multi-task Robotic system with Extended operation range and safety), a joint work of important aerial robotics actors in Europe to develop an integrated aerial cognitive robotic system that will have unprecedented capabilities in the operational range and occupational safety of aerial work and the manipulation of objects in that environment. He has been General Coordinator of the Iberian Robotics team that won the Challenge 3 MBZIRC International Robotics Competition in February 2020. In addition, he has been principal investigator of more than 80 Spanish projects.

In the above and other projects he has developed methods, technologies and applications in unmanned aerial systems, robotics, control and autonomous systems in general, including:

Furthermore, he has been the principal investigator in more than 50 contracts with industries, including recently AIRBUS GROUP, EADS, BOEING RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY EUROPE, NAVANTIA, INDRA, ITURRI and many others, transferring technologies to many companies and generating industrial products including  automatic testing systems of the airplanes CN235, C295 and A400M (EADS-CASA, from 2000), flight management systems, navigation, guidance and control for unmanned aerial systems for several companies, automatic tracking and stabilisation systems using infrared and visual cameras, (Navantia 2002-2008), automatic control of fish farms (Acuinova, 1999-2001), robotic forestry machines (Servicios Forestales, 1999-2000), automatic forest fire detection systems with false alarm reduction (E.N. Bazán 1998-2000), automatic control of wind-turbine generators (Desarrollos Eólicos, 1998), and others.

Awards and distinctions

Thanks to the achievements during his career, Anibal Ollero won the 2021 National Reserach Award in Engineering and the 31st King Jaume I Award in New Technologies. The jury, which included 5 Nobel Laureates and personalities from companies and institutions awarded the leadership of Anibal Ollero in aerial robotics and highlighted the “invaluable ability to combine excellence in research and technological innovation with the transfer of technology to companies in the field of aerial robotics“.

He has received 28 awards, including:

He is associated editor of the Journal Field Robotics (Wiley), and member of the Executive Advisory Board of the Journal of Intelligent and Robotics Systems (Springer) . He has been member of the editorial committee of several Journals including Control Engineering Practice (1993-2005), IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics (1995-2008) and ‘Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática’. Since 2022, Anibal Ollero is a member of the Royal Galician Academy of Science for his contribution to science and technology.

Other awards include best paper in several international and national conferences and the PhD award of the University of Seville. He is currently teaching Robotics, Unmanned Aerial Systems and Aerospace Robotics courses (undergraduate and Master/PhD levels)  in curricula of Aerospace Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Engineering on Electronics, Robotics and Mechatronics.

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