Reports

On 18 December, 69 new professors received their appointment decrees from the hands of Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, Robert Plaga at the Carolinum. They were nominated for the highest academic degree by scientific and artistic councils of universities, and are appointed by the president. Five new professors will now work at CTU in Prague, namely at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Architecture.

In December, the scientific team of Associate Professor Zdeněk Hurák from the Department of Control Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, together with volunteers, tested what would happen if a multi-car column was created on the road. The experiment showed that the random sample of cars on Czech roads using the ACC will behave qualitatively the same as in the case of human drivers - ie unjustified (phantom) traffic jams will occur.

Being able to move autonomously in an unknown cramped environment and create its detailed map. This is the role of a six-legged walking robot whose “brain” was programmed by our researcher and PhD student Jan Bayer. For his precisely elaborated diploma project with great societal potential "Autonomous Exploration of Unknown Rough Terrain with Hexapod Walking Robot", he won the first place in the international IT SPY competition, which annually announces the best IT diploma theses.

Out of a record number of 164 teams from 77 different secondary schools, the robotic cart by R2-D2 team from Špitálská secondary school in Prague won at the autumn part of the 11th CTU Robo Competition. Teams Mindbreak and Mindfield from Příbram secondary school ranked second and third. The final round took place on Friday, 13 December in the Zenger Auditorium of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. The event was organized by the Department of Control Engineering.

On 10 December, the best CTU athletes for 2019 were announced as part of the CTU Christmas Concert. They are Martina Satková, Anežka Paloudová, Jakub Zavřel, Jakub Dobrý and Tomáš Klinský. The Cups were handed over to the athletes by the CTU rector doc. Vojtěch Petráček, Director of the Institute of Physical Education and Sport doc. Jiří Drnek and doc. Zdeněk Valjent.

ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems) announced the establishment of 17 so-called ELLIS units at the NeurIPS conference in Vancouver, Canada on 10 December. This branches aim to establish European researchers in machine-based fields learning top conditions comparable to the world's best workplaces. The Czech Institute of Computer Science, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) of CTU has become one of the ELLIS branches located in 10 European countries and Israel.

The Faculty of Biomedical Engineering of CTU inaugurated the Laboratory of Robotic Rehabilitation in its building in Kladno on Tuesday, 10 December. The laboratory will serve both for teaching future physiotherapists and for scientific purposes. This unique workplace has state-of-the-art robotic devices for restoring walking or hand grip functions, especially for patients with neurological or post-traumatic diagnoses.

The presentation „Photon counting detector package optimized for space debris optical tracking“ was announced as an Outstanding Student Presentation at the SPIE Optics + Optoelectronics 2019 international conference. Roberta Bimbová, first year master student at the Engineering Faculty of the Czech Technical University in Prague, Department of Physical Electronics also received annual membership in SPIE Student Membership or download up to 25 articles from SPIE Digital Library. The presentation was based on an article prepared by Robert together with prof. Ivan Procházka, Josef Blažej and Jan Kodet. The article was subsequently published in SPIE Proceedings.

On 4 December, the Space Oscars for the Galileo Masters and Copernicus Masters were awarded at the European Space Week in Helsinki, Finland. Dronetag, the Faculty of Information Technology startup,had won the regional competition, got into the TOP 10 of nearly 200 projects and also has won the main E-GNSS Accelerator Award.

Two footbridges with benches on Klínová cesta, construction in the form of a truss over the Bear Creek, a triangular footbridge at Hrnčířské Bo udy and a footbridge for cars and cars in Eliška's valley have been available to visitors of the highest Czech mountains since autumn. They were created thanks to the cooperation of the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague with the Krkonoše National Park Administration. A total of 30 students from 5 studios of the Institute of Design II participated in the project.