The aviation industry relies on continuous inspections to ensure infrastructure safety, particularly in confined spaces like aircraft fuel tanks, where human inspections are labor-intensive, risky, and expose workers to hazardous exposures. Robotic systems present a promising alternative to these manual processes but face significant technical and operational challenges, including technological limitations, retraining requirements, and economic constraints. Additionally, existing prototypes often lack open-source documentation, which restricts researchers and developers from replicating setups and building on existing work. This study addresses some of these challenges by proposing a modular, open-source framework for robotic inspection systems that prioritizes simplicity and scalability. The design incorporates a robotic arm and an end-effector equipped with three RGB-D cameras to enhance the inspection process. The primary contribution lies in the development of decentralized software modules that facilitate integration and future advancements, including interfaces for teleoperation and motion planning. Preliminary results indicate that the system offers an intuitive user experience, while also enabling effective 3D reconstruction for visualization. However, improvements in incremental obstacle avoidance and path planning inside the tank interior are still necessary. Nonetheless, the proposed robotic system promises to streamline development efforts, potentially reducing both time and resources for future robotic inspection systems.

In a time when agricultural developments have led to the transgression of multiple planetary boundaries like climate change and biodiversity loss, deeply-rooted transformations in the agricultural sector are urgently needed. Vice versa, those very developments have put many farmers’ livelihoods in danger around the world. In the Costa Rican context, the “Desarrollo Sostenible a la Tica” points to the country’s well-known “green” sectors, but this paradigm has also caused a stark breach between the green image conveyed (“exceptionalismo verde”, en. “green exceptionalism”) and the actual social-ecological livelihoods of many rural communities and the state of the landscapes. However, this is not the only paradigm of sustainable development prevalent in the country. Regenerative Development, a term most prominently used in the context of Regenerative Agriculture, offers an alternative vision for Costa Rica’s futures encompassing agricultural production and culture in general. Following the stories shared by a diverse group of Costa Ricans interviewed on sustainable food systems and Regenerative Development, we drew a multifaceted picture of regeneration that includes both agricultural practices, as well as socio-cultural and relational dimensions. Referring to the power of paradigms as important scaffolds for people’s beliefs and decision-making in times of deep uncertainty, we thereafter compared the paradigm “Desarrollo Regenerativo” to the paradigm of “Desarrollo Sostenible a la Tica”. Putting these two paradigms in a dialogue, we delineated similarities and differences between them, to ultimately discuss possible ways forward: is there room for a (re-)conciliation and bridging of perspectives, or are the discrepancies between them too large, pointing to an unbridgeable gap and the need to fundamentally rethink the story of sustainable development the “Desarrollo Sostenible a la Tica” is currently telling? And what are potential implications for sustainable pineapple production?

Osnabrück University and Universidad Técnica Nacional develop inter- and transdisciplinary approaches in research and education to restore and protect biodiversity. In Costa Rica, many persistent social-ecological conflicts can be observed. The case of the Gulf of Nicoya offers a suitable testing ground for the approaches developed as part of this partnership. This article introduces the project’s focus on the relationship between cultural, economic and political aspects related to conservation, sustainable land use and community development. Currently, the project conducts research on social-ecological conflicts in the Costa Rican pineapple production and its impacts on biological diversity across the land-sea interface. The inter- and transdisciplinary project approach to research and education generates tangible knowledge among researchers, students, and non-scientific local actors.