Reports

This year, CTU again presented itself at the National Technical Museum, where it presented its interactive exhibits and projects as part of the 16th Prague Museum Night. Visitors of all ages could discover themselves that studying science and technology at CTU in Prague can not only be interesting, but also useful for society. We introduced technical innovations, project presentations and attractions to see elsewhere than on campus.

On 7 June, another year of the academic champion title - University Eights - took place at the riverside of Rašínovo nábřeží. The 8+ rowing boats with Cox (helmsman) composed of students of individual Czech and foreign universities presented themselves at an unconventional distance of 1,000 meters. The race took place within the Primatorky rowing race and the CTU team managed to defend the primacy for the seventh time in a row out of nine. The CTU male crew: Jan Hájek, Albert Caban, Jakub Paroulek, Martin Basl, Jiří Kopáč, Vit Šantrůček, Vojtěch Dědek, Jan Zavadil and Tereza Andrlová as the Cox.

The University Center for Energy Efficient Buildings at CTU has developed a design collection for Levitee concrete urban furniture with the option of installing smart technologies. The news was presented to the public on 5 and 6 June 2019 at the Urbis Smart City Fair in Brno, where it competed for the Gold Medal for the best exhibited product awarded by the international expert commission. The furniture was designed as a set consisting of a cantilever bench and accessories that should bring wide variability in placing in the public space. Its solution builds on the development already started in 2015 and is based on searches conducted between manufacturers and end users. In addition to comfortable short-term rest, the Levitee bench can charge the phone to the user via USB, provide free Wi-Fi connectivity to mobile devices and even measure air quality with various end-user sensors, making it a perfect fit for Smart City.

The first monitoring period of the Center of Advanced Applied Sciences expired at the end of March 2019. During the first period, which began in August 2018, the teams of individual research programs were formed and the research work began.

The traditional military and security technology fair IDET 2019 was held in Brno from 29 May to 31 May. CTU in Prague presented the latest research results. The Faculty of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Faculty of Biomedical Engineering presented their exhibits here. Visitors could see ballistic-resistant mobile barriers, drones, shooting ranges, walking robots, or the FlexiGuard wireless biotelemetry system. CTU Rector, Doc. Vojtěch Petráček tried all the exhibits and supported the exhibition.

The city noise barrier is an innovative noise reduction measure. It has a height of only 30 centimeters above the top of the rail, making it the lowest noise mitigation measure of its kind in Europe, while providing noise reduction from passing trams ranging from 3 to 5 decibels. It was developed by experts from the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Department of Railway Structures, in cooperation with MONTSTAV CZ. The barrier is made of recycled materials - rubber granulate - and has been designed to be quickly removed. It is installed in Prague on two tram tracks. The aim of the practice, which took place on the tram line in Prague 4 - Braník between the Pobřežní cesta and Přístaviště stations on Friday, 24 May, was to try to rescue a person wedged between a noise barrier and a tram car. Lastly, firefighters also tried various techniques for the destruction of the orifice in a real environment. Only the standard equipment of the DPP Fire Rescue Brigade were used during the event. The training intervention took place during tramway lockout in the Dvorce - Sídliště Modřany track section, which was held due to regular maintenance and repair of the tram line from the evening of 24 May to the end of daytime operation on Sunday 26 May 2019.

The Innovation Week was held from 20 to 26 May, with CTU being its academic partner. Both CTU Rector doc. Vojtěch Petráček and Lukáš Sedláček, founder of the event, had given speech at the opening.

Results of the Biosignal Challenge 2019 international competition were announced on May 21, with participation of the future Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of CTU in Prague, prof. Petr Páta and Dean of the 2nd Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, prof. Vladimír Komárek. In the third year of the competition the focus was set on the detection and localization of the onset zone of epileptic seizures. The best overall result was achieved by Bc. Laura Shala, student of Medical Electronics and Bioinformatics at Faculty of Electrical Engineering of CTU in Prague. Her solution extends the basic principles of seizure detection in invasive EEGs to graph theory methods that describe abnormal communication between brain areas affected by epileptic seizures.

CTU in Prague, Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic joined forces with the capital city, froming the prg.ai initiative, which will promote cutting-edge science and research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Initiators are planning to attract world scientists to the Czech Republic, expand the base of Czech AI talents and help the emergence of new technology companies and startups. Thanks to the prg.ai initiative, presented to the public on 16 May, Prague can soon become a center of artificial intelligence of European significance. In addition to the Prague City Hall, the government and major private companies support this unique initiative.

Scientists from the Department of Cybernetics and Computer Department of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague successfully participated at the preparatory camp of the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which took place in the mountains near Denver, USA in April. The aim of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, which has a total budget of over $ 250 million, is to develop a system of autonomous cooperative ground robots and drones that can, without human assistance, explore a mine in the event of a mine disaster and find signs of overburdened miners. The CTU-CRAS CTU team achieved the best result in their group as part of a simulated contest, and its robots were able to find several objects in the real mine to confirm the survival of miners. The devices even got into an area where one of the dummies representing the injured victim of the simulated disaster.