Reports

Of today's robots, it can overcome obstacles the fastest even in difficult terrain, it can safely climb stairs, it can wade through mud and water. The four-legged autonomous SPOT robot from Boston Dynamics joined researchers from the CTU Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE) on 3 May to strengthen their chances in the finals of the prestigious DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, which will take place from 21 to 23 September 2021 in United States of America. In addition to participating in the competition, the robot from FEE CTU will be used in follow-up research in the field of autonomous movement in an environment that is inhabited by people.

Students of the Faculty of Information Technology have been participating in the activities of the American non-profit company Czech-American TV since 2009 through the outputs of their final theses to improve awareness of the Czech Republic and its regions. Thanks to this, CTU FIT was the only faculty in the Czech Republic to receive an award for long-term promotion of the Czech Republic. The award was presented to the faculty by the founder of the Czech-American TV, American producer John Honner.

The Institute of Technical and Experimental Physics (ÚTEF) of the Czech Technical University in Prague has long been dealing with the physics of the microworld, which also includes ionizing radiation. The study of the composition of its energy spectrum, directional vectors of particles and time resolution is a long-term contribution of the institute to the international collaboration Medipix / Timepix, while the institute belongs to its founding members. The development of detectors, application methods and the use of pixel detectors in particular are among the undeniable successes of the institute.

Artificial intelligence (AI) research at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University has entered the most prestigious company of 59 universities in 13 countries. Among the 101 scientists awarded by Amazon are prof. Jiří Matas from the Department of Cybernetics with a project in the field of computer vision and prof. Jan Faigl from the Department of Computers, who uses artificial intelligence to create communication maps of underground spaces.

On Thursday 22 April 2021, an important discussion on the present and future development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Europe, which involved key European scientists, leaders, high-level experts and the general public, took place during the “European Vision for AI 2021“ event, just a day after the European Commission published its European Approach to Artificial Intelligence. The event, organised by the VISION project consortium partners in cooperation with four networks of centres of excellence on AI (AI4Media, ELISE, TAILOR, HumanE-AI-Net), was motivated by the need to discuss with the general public how the European scientific community is currently planning to move European AI forward, to future success in a competitive environment increasingly dominated by the US and China.

Prof. Olga Štěpánková and prof. Vladimír Mařík from the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of the Czech Technical University (CTU - CIIRC) met with Ivan M. Havel in the autumn of 2019 to prepare a publication entitled "70 Years of Strange Science. Interviews with our cybernetics ", which includes contributions from 24 authors. The book was published by Česká technika - the CTU publishing house as a commemoration of the anniversary of the first edition of Wiener's work "Cybernetics or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" in 1948.

At the end of March, the Council for Research, Development and Innovation approved the results of the so-called scaling of all research organizations according to the Methodology 2017+. Research organizations were divided into four groups according to the quality of their selected research and development results on a national scale. Czech Technical University in Prague was assessed in a group of technical universities and received the highest rating grade

The box, which attaches to the power cord, can monitor the consumption of electro appliance and send data via the Internet of Things (IoT). This is how the intelligent probe for non-contact indication of appliance activity and energy consumption works, which is currently undergoing the last phase of field testing within the Smart Solutions for Prague project. This unique probe was developed by experts from the Department of Telecommunication Engineering. The difference from existing standard energy reading solutions is that the innovative "En-Meter M" probe does not have to be connected to the electrical circuit and can be used to monitor electricity consumption virtually anywhere and anytime.

The LEGO company, which has a large production plant in Kladno in the Czech Republic, has a long-term cooperation with the CTU Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) in the field of research and development. The development team does not work with a specific assignment, but looks for opportunities to improve and streamline production and working conditions. Successful solutions will be gradually extended to other LEGO plants around the world.

With its project Energy Self-Sufficient Prague, the team of the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University was selected in competition with other innovative teams to advance to the finals and awarded with CZK 10,000 to support the project implementation. The final of the marathon will take place at the end of June.