The competition is carried out by the German government's non-profit organisation SPRIND (Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen), which promotes innovation and breakthrough technologies in various sectors through competitions, project calls and other tools. This time, the focus is on fully autonomous flying robots, as is evident from its name, SPRIND Funke Fully Autonomous Flight. This area of research has great potential for future use in, for example, transport, security of objects or rescue operations. The Czech team is officially participating in the competition under the Fly4Future banner. This venture was established in 2017 as a spin-out of the MRS FEL CTU research group.
The research group will participate in the competition through the scientist doc. Martin Saska and Dr. Tomáš Báča, who work at FEL CTU and co-founded Fly4Future, but also through the students of CTU FEL who were invited to join the team. "The competition is exceptional because the most advanced solutions require unique knowledge, which few research teams in the world possess. The key technology of autonomous drones is the subject of research of three PhD students from the faculty, and that is why Fly4Future invited them to cooperate and hired them to participate in the competition," explains doc. Saska why the students of FEL CTU were involved in the competition, Ing. Michal Werner, Ing. Tomáš Musil, Bc. David Čapek and Bc. Ondřej Franek. "Students here will therefore significantly help on the way to developing a successful solution and at the same time have a unique opportunity to test their research in non-standard conditions. It is very difficult to get permission to fly fully autonomous AI-controlled robots without visual contact from the operator, but SPRIND has obtained an exemption for this competition at Erding Air Base. This is therefore crucial for the research results and its impact, and it will also help our students greatly in their publishing activities," adds doc. Saska, who is also the head of the MRS group at CTU FEL .
The competition scenario is motivated by a "search and rescue" task; the drone must fly autonomously to the desired location, retrieve a 20x20x20 cm object weighing 1.5 kg and move it to another location. The weight of the flying robot itself must also not exceed 25 kg. The drones will have to cope with the absence of a GPS signal and a challenging outdoor environment; they will move in urban and forested terrain as well as in open spaces. Thus, the ability to avoid obstacles and move by points at high speed and over longer distances will be important. Teams can also take part in the night challenge, which is all the more challenging due to the lack of daylight.
The team has been working on its solution since the beginning of 2024, when it was selected for the competition. In April, the teams presented their results to date in the first round, also held at Erding Air Base, and nine finalists emerged. The meeting also gave the researchers the opportunity to network and share know-how with each other. For the finals in Bavaria, the teams will meet during the week of 16-20 September, with the first three days devoted to testing and final debugging of the software and the actual competitions taking place on the last two days of the finals. "Preparations are well underway and the whole system seems to be working and will be able to perform the competition. The conditions of the competition are still a big challenge though, so we are relatively nervous about how it will work. We are looking forward to networking with the other teams; we are really interested to see what solutions the other competitors come up with," says team leader, Dr. Tomáš Báča. The teams actually only know part of the brief in advance. The complete instructions are only given to them on the spot, so their flexibility and responsiveness is important.
Participation is financially supported by SPRIND, the host. Throughout the competition, teams will share up to 70,000 euros between them in the first phase and up to 80,000 euros in the second phase. These funds are earmarked for research and development so that the emergence of innovative technologies does not fail due to lack of funding. Thanks to their participation in the competition, scientists and developers from Fly4Future and the MRS research group of CTU FEL will also have the opportunity to gain new contacts and showcase their technology to potential investors as well as to the international academic community, who will be able to see how cutting-edge research is carried out at the faculty. Although the winning team will not receive any explicit reward, the prize is naturally increased investor interest in the winning solution. The Czech team has so far demonstrated the highest degree of autonomy of all participants, so the chances of winning are not small. The winner will be announced on the last day of the finals, 20 September 2024.