Video, photo: Students from all over the world showed how to fly drones in Prague
Source: Diary/Radek Cihla
The groups of four then verified in an outdoor experiment to what extent they managed to master the methodology and transfer it to a fully functional robotic system. “At the same time, their drones will compete with each other in the air for the one that can quickly fulfill the assignment and take a camera of various elements of the energy transmission system. They will fly between mock-ups of masts on which, as part of the European AerialCore project, we are testing the practical possibilities of inspecting power lines with the help of flying robots,” explained Martin Saska, head of the Multi-Robotic Systems Group operating at the Department of Cybernetics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of CTU, before the events.
Apart from the sciences, the biggest attractions include establishing contacts
IEEE RAS Summer School participants from all over the world are attracted both by the reputation of the MRS FEL CTU team, which dominated the last unofficial drone world championship in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in 2020, and by the autonomous drones they learned to fly. They stand out above competing platforms in particular with software enabling truly autonomous behavior of flying drones. Thanks to this, they can move safely and cooperate with other robots even in environments without a GPS signal, such as caves or unknown indoor spaces. Their properties are predestined for use in special missions, such as mapping historical securities of interiors, extinguishing fires in high-rise buildings, rescuing people, inspecting power lines or capturing enemy drones.
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During the Summer School, which followed the two previous years after a one-year covid break, the participants performed the cutting edge of contemporary robotics. Konstantinos Alexis, currently a professor of technical cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who with his CERBERUS team last year dominated the DARPA Subterreannean Challenge, widely considered the “Olympics of robotics teams,” attracted the most attention. Together with colleagues from ETH Zurich, Alexis also holds the world record for endurance flight in the class of unmanned aircraft weighing less than 50 kg: their AtlantikSolar remained in the air for 81.5 hours.
In the DARPA competition, it also held its own for a long time, and the CTU-CRAS-NORLAB team led by Tomáš Svoboda, head of the Department of Cybernetics at the FEL of Czech Technical University, brought silver from the virtual competition, whose presentation was also part of the Summer School program. Young researchers and students were also addressed by Martin Saska with the latest results of the development of fully autonomous compact swarms of flying robots with on-board artificial intelligence, on which MRS FEL CTU collaborates with several world-leading workplaces. The lineup of lecturers included researchers from Boston University, Delft University, Seville University and other world-leading workplaces, among others.
Artificial Intelligence
The organizers of the Summer School also place great emphasis on the social dimension of the entire event. “After last year’s covid break, this is the first event where young researchers can get together again and establish contacts,” says Martin Saska, who is pleased that some Summer School participants are returning and further developing their knowledge from previous years.
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Among other things, Antoine Milot, a doctoral student from LAAS-CNRS, a research laboratory at the University of Toulouse, returned to the Summer School after two years. He develops algorithms for underwater robots, and participating in a summer school allows him to stay in touch with major trends in the field of multi-robotic systems. “It’s a great opportunity for me to exchange experiences with people who are working on these challenges,” says Antoine Milot, who also appreciates the quality of the presentation on the current state-of-the-art robotics technology and the opportunity to try out a new simulation environment, which you can then possibly use in your own research .
Among the participants were also representatives of companies that see a perspective in drones and want to support their further development by participating in this event. This is the case with GoodAI, a company that develops artificial intelligence.
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“As part of our research in general artificial intelligence, at GoodAI we focus on collective intelligence and multi-agent systems. Previously, we mainly focused on the theoretical side, but now we are looking at how we can apply these systems in practice. We think that the ‘state of the art’ is already at such a level that we can do interesting experiments and quickly innovate, thus creating useful, practically usable applications, for example in robotics. It is important for us at this stage to identify in which industries collective intelligence and swarms would add the most value. In addition, drones and robotics are a lot of fun for me and my colleagues, so it is a logical step for us to delve more into this area,” says Jaroslav Vítků, Senior Research Scientist, who participates in the Summer School.