EUSOME: Excellence Hub for Advanced Air Mobility

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Overview

EUSOME (Enabling Autonomous Aerial Systems through Operational Methods and Technological Enhancements) is a 4-year European Excellence Hub project funded by the Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No. 101187121).

With a total budget of nearly €6 million, the project aims to modernize the air mobility ecosystem in the Southeast Mediterranean region. It addresses regional challenges such as goods and people transportation, complex landscape surveillance, fire risk management, and traffic congestion monitoring through the integration of large drone systems and intelligent coordination technology.

Core Pillars of Innovation

The project is structured around four primary objectives:

Research & Innovation Infrastructure: Establishing an open-access infrastructure to foster technological advancements in Autonomous Aerial Systems (AAS).
Regulatory Masterplan: Developing a strategic plan for the regional adoption of EASA regulations on Advanced Air Mobility.
Thematic Innovation Hub (TIH): A dedicated hub to explore market possibilities, consultancy services, and open-access policies for project outputs.
Mentoring & Outreach: Building regional expertise through training programs and promoting public engagement to ensure societal acceptance of AAM technology.

My Role

As Principal Investigator for ISI / ATHENA Research Center, I lead the institute’s participation in EUSOME, covering:

6G-integrated U-Space communications — designing ISAC waveforms for UAV swarm coordination and command-and-control links.
UAV path planning under channel uncertainty — developing MPC frameworks that optimize trajectory and MIMO ergodic rates jointly.
Detect-and-Avoid for BVLOS operations — radar-camera fusion for obstacle detection in autonomous UAS.

UAV field test, Athens, January 2026

DEFEA 2025 exhibition, Athens

Getting a UAV ready for flight tests, July 2025

Selected Publications

E. Vlachos, P. Kolios, C. Skliros, “Hardware-Aware SE(3) Control Barrier Functions for Counter-UAS Interceptors with Directed Energy Payloads,” 2026 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), Corfu, Greece, June 2026.

The Consortium

Coordinated by the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence at the University of Cyprus, EUSOME unites 16 partners across Cyprus, Greece, Poland, and Serbia:

Partner	Country	Role
KIOS / University of Cyprus	Cyprus	Coordinator
ATHENA Research Center (ISI)	Greece	Research — PI: E. Vlachos
Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority	Greece	Regulation
Aviomania Aircraft	Greece	Industry
Hellenic Drones S.A.	Greece	Industry
Adrestia R&D	Greece	Research
Ministry of Digital Governance	Greece	Policy
Hellenic U-space Institute	Greece	Standards
GRNET	Greece	Infrastructure
Cyprus Ministry of Transport	Cyprus	Policy
Cyprus Chamber of Commerce	Cyprus	Industry
Mediterranean Adventure Ltd	Cyprus	Operations
Region of Epirus	Greece	Regional authority
SocialTech Lab	Serbia	Outreach
Institute Mihajlo Pupin	Serbia	Research
Centrum Badań Kosmicznych PAN	Poland	Research

Project News & Milestones

September 2026 — SkySense 2026 Workshop (Nicosia): EUSOME co-organised SkySense 2026 with the REFINE project at IEEE CAMAD 2026, including an invited talk by E. Vlachos on cellular ISAC for detecting non-cooperative drones in U-Space.
September 2026 — NextGCom 2026 (Kefalonia): E. Vlachos chaired the special session on integrated sensing and AI-driven communication in 6G perceptive mobile networks and presented EUSOME work on semantically-informed UAV connectivity.
June 2026 — 3rd Plenary Meeting (Nicosia): Consortium-wide review of progress and planning.
June 2026 — ICUAS 2026 (Corfu): EUSOME work on hardware-aware control barrier functions for counter-UAS interceptors was presented at the International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
May 2026 — 2nd Press Release: EUSOME published its second press release on the project’s achievements after 15 months of work.
March 2026 — 5G Measurements from the Air: ISI / ATHENA drone flights measured 5G signal strength at 20–60 m altitude over urban areas, to support connectivity-aware UAV mission planning.
February 2026 — eVTOL Design Update: Aviomania Aircraft unveiled design targets for the EUSOME eVTOL platform: under 100 kg empty weight with a modular, mission-adaptable interior.
February 2026 — Science Café on AAM: First public outreach event at the University of Cyprus engaging citizens on Advanced Air Mobility.
February 2026 — 3rd EUSOME Study Visit (Belgrade): Consortium partners gathered at the Institute Mihajlo Pupin for knowledge exchange on U-Space technologies and cross-border coordination.
January 2026 — HCAA UAS Flight Plan Update: The Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority published updated UAS flight plan regulations, advancing the national U-Space framework.
November 2025 — 2nd EUSOME Study Visit (Belgrade): The Institute Mihajlo Pupin hosted the second study visit of the EUSOME Mentoring & Training Programme, with partners from KIOS and CBK PAN and Serbian stakeholders from civil aviation, emergency management and the postal service.
October 2025 — SkySense 2025 Workshop (Patras): EUSOME and the REFINE project co-organised SkySense 2025 at IEEE ISC2 2025, University of Patras (workshop chair: E. Vlachos).
October 2025 — 2nd Transnational Plenary Meeting (Patras): Hosted by ATHENA at the University of Patras; consortium-wide review of progress and planning for the next phase.
October 2025 — Newsletter Launch: First edition of the EUSOME Newsletter published.
September 2025 — Geo-Zone Mapping (Cyprus): Partners working on drone corridor routes and geo-zone infrastructure for national U-Space deployment.
July 2025 — EUSOME at Oshkosh EAA AirVenture: Aviomania Aircraft showcased the EUSOME eVTOL concept at the world’s largest airshow.
July 2025 — UCY Summer Academies: Outreach to the next generation through drone demonstrations and AAM talks at the University of Cyprus.
June 2025 — WSIS+20 High-Level Event: SocialTech Lab represented EUSOME at the World Summit on the Information Society.
May 2025 — EUSOME at DEFEA 2025: Project featured at the Defence Exhibition Athens, demonstrating dual-use potential of AAM technologies.
May 2025 — Mentoring Programme Launch: The EUSOME mentoring and training programme officially kicked off in Belgrade.
January 2025: Official Project Kick-off Meeting in Cyprus.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101187121.

FIRA-DAV: Feature-level Image and Radar Fusion for Detect and Avoid

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Project Overview

FIRA-DAV (Feature-level Image and Radar Fusion for Improved Detect and Avoid Functionality in Autonomous Aerial Vehicles) is a Proof-of-Concept project funded by the Athena Research Center Technology Transfer Office under the internal PoC programme (ΔΕΜΤ, project No. 80260). The project was competitively selected in June 2023 following evaluation by a three-member expert panel, and ran from September 2023 for 6 months.

As Principal Investigator, I led the design, equipment procurement, and dataset construction for radar–camera sensor fusion targeting UAV Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) — a critical safety requirement for beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations. The project was carried out in collaboration with Hellenic Drones (industry partner, Dr. Christos Skliros) and ROBOSURVEY LTD (equipment supplier).

Team

Dr. Evangelos Vlachos — PI, Athena Research Center / ISI
Hellenic Drones (Dr. Christos Skliros) — Industry partner

Equipment & Dataset

The project procured a Texas Instruments IWR6843AoP 77 GHz FMCW mmWave radar (Antenna-on-Package variant) and a synchronized CSI camera, integrated on a drone-mounted embedded platform. Measurement campaigns produced a synchronized dataset of radar 3D point clouds and RGB camera frames in real flight conditions, including UAV-to-UAV scenarios for obstacle detection.

Key technical work:

Data collection: Synchronized radar point clouds and RGB frames captured in real UAV flight scenarios
Calibration: Radar-to-camera extrinsic transformation, intrinsic camera calibration
CFAR detection: Configuration of detection and tracking layers for the IWR6843AoP sensor
Applied for Google Cloud Research Credits to support deep neural network training on the collected dataset

Technical Outcomes

Synchronized radar–camera dataset collected under real flight conditions
Derivation of transformation function mapping radar 3D point cloud to 2D image plane
Training pipeline for spatial attention fusion neural network combining radar and vision features
Efficient Python and Julia code for embedded AI deployment
Dataset and equipment directly adopted by EUSOME (Horizon Europe, 2025–2028), which carries no equipment budget

Reviewer Recognition

The proposal was rated positively by all three external reviewers:

“This is a huge market and everyone is working on it. This tech, if unique and solves real issues, has cross applicability.”

“Deep-tech IT solution that relies on state-of-the-art technology and strong know-how that is probably difficult to be copied.”

Funded by the Athena Research Center under the internal Proof-of-Concept (PoC) programme (ΔΕΜΤ No. 80260) of the Technology Transfer Office.

Autonomous Systems | Dr. Evangelos Vlachos

EUSOME: Excellence Hub for Advanced Air Mobility

Project Overview

Core Pillars of Innovation

My Role

Selected Publications

The Consortium

Project News & Milestones

FIRA-DAV: Feature-level Image and Radar Fusion for Detect and Avoid

Project Overview

Team

Equipment & Dataset

Technical Outcomes

Reviewer Recognition