Anibal Ollero

Anibal Ollero is Head of GRVC Robotics Laboratory with 70 members (average in the last 5 years) at the University of Seville and Scientific Director of the Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) also in Seville. He has been a full professor at the Universities of Santiago de Compostela in Vigo and Malaga (Spain), and a researcher at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA) and LAAS-CNRS (Toulouse, France). 

He authored about 1,000 publications, including more than 275 papers in journals, and 9 books, and has been editor of 15 books. He led more than 190 research and innovation projects. He has an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, has coordinated 7 European projects of the European Framework Programmes, being the last one AERIAL-CORE on the applications of IA to aerial robotics, and participated, leading a partner team, in 45 projects of these Framework Programmes. He is currently co-coordinating the project STRATOLASER (Stratospheric balloon-based laser ablation system for space debris removal) of the European Research Council with 6 partners from Spain, Germany, Czech Republic and Italy.

He has transferred technologies in more than 89 contracts with more than 50 companies. He has been supervisor or co-supervisor of 57 PhD Thesis. According to Scopus, he is the author with more papers in unmanned aerial vehicles, in aerial robotics and in aerial robotics manipulation. Furthermore, he is co-author of the two most cited papers on aerial robotic manipulation and has three papers between the 15 most cited in multi-UAV systems.

He has been recognized with 36 awards, including the Rei Jaume I Award in New Technologies 2019, the Spanish National Research Award in Engineering 2021, the ICUAS Achievement Award "for outstanding achievements and contributions in Unmanned Aviation and Aerial Robotics”, elected among the three European Innovators in 2017 and among the European personalities in  2017,  and has been Overall Winner of the ICT  Innovation Radar Prize 2017 of the European Commission, First European EU Drone Application Award and Second in the  EURON-EUROP Technology Transfer Award, 2010, Automatica Spanish National Award 2022, Andalusia Award for Engineering Development 2021, Coordinator of the team that won the  Challenge 3 in MBZIRC 2020 competition and 4th in the overall competition,  Best two teams in Europe (EUROC) from the best 30 aerial robotics labs in Europe. He has obtained the Best Paper Award at many Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Systems Conferences. The jury of the Jaume I award, 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 aerial robotics”.

He is an IEEE Fellow, co-chair of the “IEEE Technical Committee on Aerial Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” and coordinator of the “Aerial Robotics Topic Group” of euRobotics. He was a member of the “Board of Directors” de euRobotics until March 2019 and a founder and president of the Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics until November 2017. He is a member of the Royal Engineering Academy of Spain, the Royal Science Academy of Galicia and the Royal Science Academy of Seville. He is also “Doctor Honoris Causa” by the Universidad de Málaga.