About

Grounded in research,
driven to build.

We bring together robotics, navigation and software engineering to turn research into dependable autonomy software. Vasco Robotics grows out of work at the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Bern.

Team

Meet the
founders.

Our founders combine experience in robotics, autonomous navigation and software engineering to build Vasco’s technology and bring it into practice.

CEO

Luca Di Pierno

BSc & MSc ETH Zurich

PhD candidate in Robotics

University of Klagenfurt · CNS group

Robotics & intelligent systems

Luca studied Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich (BSc and MSc) before joining the Control of Networked Systems group at the University of Klagenfurt, where he is completing a PhD in Robotics under Prof. Stephan Weiss.

His research centres on autonomy for aerial and space robots: multi-agent systems, real-time perception and collaborative decision-making in GPS-denied environments. As a visiting researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory he worked on autonomy frameworks for space exploration, presented at IEEE CASE 2025.

Luca led the HERMES team that won Stage 2 of SPRIN-D’s Fully Autonomous Flight 2.0 Challenge in 2026, developing its core autonomy and overall navigation architecture. He also leads the University of Klagenfurt’s SAPIENCE team, which builds cooperative search-and-rescue UAVs for GPS-denied environments and won the NATO SPS SAPIENCE competition in Huntsville, USA, in 2025.

At Vasco he leads the company and its overall technical direction.

CTO

Giulio Delama

BSc & MSc Mechatronics Engineering

PhD candidate in Robotics

University of Klagenfurt · CNS group

Navigation & sensor fusion

Giulio is an engineer with a background in mechatronics and control systems. He is completing a PhD in Robotics in the Control of Networked Systems group at the University of Klagenfurt under Prof. Stephan Weiss.

His research focuses on geometric methods and equivariant systems theory for state estimation, multi-sensor fusion and inertial navigation: the mathematics that keeps an aircraft’s estimate of where it is consistent when GPS is gone. His work includes UVIO, an UWB-aided visual-inertial odometry framework, equivariant IMU preintegration on the Galilean group, and equivariant filters for radar-inertial odometry.

Beyond the papers, he builds the C++ libraries behind this work: Lie group operations, IMU preintegration and sensor-fusion frameworks that fly on real research aircraft.

At Vasco he leads the technology: navigation, state estimation and the sensor-fusion core of the autonomy brain.

COO

Roman Bögli

BSc FHNW & MSE OST

PhD candidate in Computer Science

University of Bern · SEG

Software engineering & security

Roman is a PhD candidate in the Software Engineering Group at the University of Bern, where he has worked since 2024. His research focuses on software variability, applied cryptography and decentralized systems.

For his master’s thesis, he worked as a student researcher in the Decentralized Trust team within IBM Research’s Security Research Department in Rüschlikon. His research addressed privacy-protecting and post-quantum secure digital asset protocols.

He brings more than a decade of experience across project management, software engineering and research, including industry roles at VZ VermögensZentrum and reByte. This experience informs his DevSecOps approach to integrating security throughout the software lifecycle. He holds an MSE in Computer Science with a focus on cybersecurity from OST and a BSc in Business Information Technology from FHNW. His studies included exchanges in Australia and Canada.

At Vasco, he oversees software architecture and lifecycle processes, contributes to secure communication, and leads company operations.

Advisory

Meet the
advisors.

Our advisors bring research experience in autonomous robotics and software engineering, guiding the architecture and methods behind Vasco’s technology.

Advisory board

Prof. Dr. Stephan Weiss

MSc & PhD ETH Zurich

Full Professor · Chair of CNS

University of Klagenfurt

Robotics, sensor fusion, and autonomous navigation.

Stephan Weiss received his MSc in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology in 2008 and his PhD in 2012 from ETH Zurich, with the thesis “Vision Based Navigation for Micro Helicopters” at the Autonomous Systems Lab under Prof. Roland Siegwart.

From 2012 to 2015 he was a Research Technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section and lectured at the California Institute of Technology. His algorithms were key to the Mars Helicopter Scout proposal and its proof-of-concept demonstration, the line of work that led to the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.

Since October 2015 he is Full Professor for Control of Networked Systems at the University of Klagenfurt. His group works on state estimation, sensor fusion, motion planning and autonomy for mobile systems in GPS-denied environments, and guided the HERMES team that won SPRIN-D’s Fully Autonomous Flight 2.0 Challenge.

Advisory board

Prof. Dr. Timo Kehrer

PhD University of Siegen

Full Professor · Chair of SEG

University of Bern

Software engineering and automation for autonomous systems.

Timo Kehrer received his PhD from the University of Siegen. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Politecnico di Milano, a visiting researcher at the University of Leicester and an assistant professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin before joining the University of Bern in January 2022 as Professor and Chair of the Software Engineering Group.

His research covers software evolution and variability management, model-driven engineering and graph transformation, software product lines and configuration systems, and software engineering for scientific and computational systems.

He is President of CHOOSE, the Swiss Group for Software Engineering, a board member of Informatics Europe, General Chair of SE 2026 and VaMoS’24, and serves on the programme committees of ICSE, FSE, ASE and MODELS.

He advises Vasco on software architecture, variability and verifiable engineering practice for autonomous systems.

Where we come from

Scientific roots.
Engineering instinct.

Vasco grows out of the Control of Networked Systems group at the University of Klagenfurt and the Software Engineering Group at the University of Bern. The autonomy architecture developed within the competition-winning HERMES team is our technical foundation. We share one conviction: progress in robotics depends on how software is built, tested and maintained.

Founding
2027Planned incorporation. Vasco Robotics is a venture in formation.
Roots
ETH Zurich · NASA JPLWhere members of our team and advisory board studied and researched.
Proven
2 × winnerUniversity teams led by our CEO won SPRIN-D Flight 2.0 Stage 2 (2026) and NATO SPS SAPIENCE (2025).
Focus
Anything that fliesUAVs today. Reusable autonomy software for more aircraft and missions tomorrow.
Why we do it

Leipzig was
a warning.

On the night of 4–5 August 2026, a drone carrying an explosive device was found at Leipzig/Halle Airport. A cargo aircraft going around after the runway closure also collided with an object, suspected to be another drone.

For us, this underlines the need for earlier awareness around airports and other critical infrastructure. We are building towards detection, tracking and timely warning, with guidance for responders and interceptors while people retain decisions on intervention.

  1. Detect

    See it early

    Combine ground sensors and airborne scouts to identify small, low-flying objects.

  2. Track

    Follow what matters

    Connect observations across sensors and aircraft into a continuous picture of movement.

  3. Warn

    Give people time to act

    Turn tracks into clear information about what is approaching, where and when.

  4. Guide

    Support the response

    Guide responders and interceptors to the right location. Keep intervention decisions with people.

Where we are going

From autonomy
to judgement.

Navigation, onboard planning and autonomous mission execution are our competition-tested research foundation. We are extending them towards richer scene understanding, agentic reasoning and verified behaviour changes during a mission.

Fast decision-making

Decide on board

Extend onboard planning with prediction and reasoning under uncertainty, while keeping decisions local to the aircraft.

Reasoning

Understand the mission

Connect scene understanding with mission intent and weigh alternatives. Longer term, let operators describe missions in natural language, with explicit logic for execution.

Adaptation

Handle the unexpected

Develop behaviour that responds to degraded sensors, new obstacles and changing conditions within explicit operating constraints.

Roots & programmes

Research roots.
Field experience.

Where our team trained and researched, and the programmes that tested our technology.