The prestige of the Summer School is continuously growing in the robotics community. The organizing team expects a high number of participants again this year. About 200 students are expected to come to Prague, with a large number of them coming from abroad. According to the organizers, the participants come from the world's best universities in the field of engineering and technology - for example, ETH Zurich, Tsinghua University, University of California, Berkeley, or Delft University of Technology.
In the exercises, the teams will focus on the design of cooperative robotics algorithms and then use the gained experiences on Tuesday, 5 August, to deploy cooperative aerial robots in the Eagle.One test arena on Císařský ostrov. The student teams will test whether they have sufficiently understood the methodology and programmed the algorithms for real robotic systems successfully.
"Students will apply exercises targeting inventory and inspection in a real outdoor environment, which is currently in high demand by companies. It is an interesting application, when equipment is checked, for example, on construction sites or in large industrial complexes - whether the material is not stolen or damaged", described the task Associate Professor Martin Saska, head of the Multirobotic Systems Group at the FEE CTU. The teams will work with a high-tech autonomous drone platform developed by the MRS group in cooperation with the Czech robotics company Fly4Future, an official CTU spin-out.
Famous speakers will arrive
Also this year, participants can look forward to a series of lectures by top scientists. "A very interesting speaker will be Professor Bruno Siciliano, who is one of the most important roboticists in Europe - practically the founder of robotics in Italy," emphasized Associate Professor Martin Saska. "He is one of the most cited scientists in our field," the researcher added. Professor Siciliano works at the University of Naples. He and his team are researching the control of human-robot collaboration and the field of service robotics.
The next speaker will be British Professor Iain Couzin, who is the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and also works at the University of Konstanz. Prof Couzin's research seeks to uncover and describe the fundamental principles underlying the collective behaviour of different biological systems. From neuronal clusters to insect and fish schools to primate groups - to artificial systems such as biomimetic robotics that aim to mimic animals or plants. Iain Couzin has previously worked at Princeton University.
Speakers will include Professor Sabine Hauert from the University of Bristol, who and her team are researching and creating robotic swarms at a variety of scales - from nanorobots used for cancer treatment to larger robots targeted at environmental monitoring or logistics. But this is not the whole range of interesting speakers, including Associate Professor Martin Saska. Information about all speakers can be found on the Summer School website.
According to the organizers, the informal part of the event focused on establishing professional contacts, new friendships, and discovering the Czech Republic outside the faculty is also important.
"The novelty of this year's summer school is that we have moved the programme so that students will spend a weekend in Prague - so unusually we start on Wednesday and end on Tuesday," pointed out doc. Saska. "The students can visit Karlštejn or the ossuary in Sedlec near Kutná Hora, which was of great interest to the participants in previous years. This year they will not only see the beauty of Prague, but also its surroundings, which will hopefully make them like the Czech Republic even more, and they will be happy to come back," concluded doc. Saska.