In modern conflicts and post‑conflict zones alike, the deadliest enemy is often invisible.

Landmines. Improvised explosive devices. Hidden threats buried just below the surface—waiting long after the fighting ends. Clearing them is slow, dangerous, and painfully human. Europe now wants machines to go first.

Under the EU‑funded TICHE project, a coalition of industry, academia, and government agencies is building a new kind of detection system—one where aerial and ground robots operate together in coordinated swarms to identify hidden explosive threats before a human ever enters the danger zone.

At the center of this effort sits UAV Navigation–Grupo Oesía, a Spanish company best known for building the invisible systems that keep unmanned aircraft stable, autonomous, and controllable. In TICHE, they are responsible for something far more complex than flight control: making cross‑domain robotic swarms behave safely, predictably, and in sync.

Detection without exposure

TICHE—short for Threats Identification by Collaborative vehicles for Human lifesaving against Explosives—is designed to tackle one of defense and humanitarian demining’s hardest problems: detecting explosives in complex environments without putting people in harm’s way.

The approach is explicitly multi‑platform. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) work together, fusing data from advanced sensors and AI‑driven analytics to identify landmines and IEDs that would otherwise require slow, manual inspection.

Rather than relying on a single robot or sensor, TICHE distributes the task across a coordinated team—each platform contributing a piece of the puzzle.

This is where UAV Navigation–Grupo Oesía comes in.

The hard part: making swarms behave

Flying one autonomous drone is no longer the hard problem. Flying many of them—at the same time, in close proximity, and alongside ground robots—is.

Within TICHE, UAV Navigation–Grupo Oesía is tasked with ensuring the safe cross‑domain operation of multiple unmanned platforms, managing the coordinated flight of aerial swarms while guaranteeing seamless integration with ground vehicles.

This is not choreography for show. It’s mission‑critical autonomy.

In real‑world environments—rubble, vegetation, uneven terrain, electronic interference—robots must coordinate without collisions, data loss, or unpredictable behavior. A swarm that cannot be trusted is worse than useless.

By applying its long‑standing expertise in guidance, navigation, and control (GNC), UAV Navigation enables these systems to operate as a single, distributed detection network rather than isolated machines.

Sensors, AI, and data fusion

The real promise of TICHE lies in data fusion.

Each platform—airborne or terrestrial—collects different signals. TICHE combines these streams using intelligent algorithms to build a clearer picture of what lies hidden below the surface. The project emphasizes not only detection accuracy, but also power efficiency, portability, and continuous operation, ensuring the technology can function in real missions, not just labs.

This matters because explosive threat detection is rarely a one‑off task. It requires persistence—hours or days of scanning large areas where humans cannot safely linger.

A European model for defense innovation

Funded by the European Commission through the European Defence Fund and led by RINA‑CSM, TICHE reflects a distinctly European approach to defense innovation: collaborative, dual‑use, and explicitly focused on saving lives.

While the technology supports military operations, its implications extend to humanitarian demining, disaster response, and post‑conflict recovery. Every explosive detected remotely is one less risk to soldiers, aid workers, or civilians.

Machines first, humans safer

TICHE does not promise a world without explosives. It promises something more achievable—and more urgent: a world where humans no longer have to be the first to look for them.

By teaching aerial and ground robots to move, think, and detect together, Europe is quietly redefining how safety is achieved in the most dangerous environments.

In the future, the first step into a minefield may not be taken by a human at all.

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