Fly4Future Participating in the Finals of the SPRIND Funke Competition

Our team from Fly4Future and students from MRS Group at FEE-CTU Prague, which we invited to cooperate, have advanced to the final of the prestigious international competition SPRIND Funke in Germany at Erding Air Base, where they will compete with the best in the field of autonomous flight.

With their innovative approach and technical abilities, they aim to tackle tasks in 4 challenging disciplines, all within a GNSS-denied environment:

1️⃣ Urban flight
2️⃣ Open terrain navigation
3️⃣ Maneuvering through wooded areas
4️⃣ Precision package pick-up in a clearing

The final race will take place in the week of September 16-20, 2024.

Photo credit: Felix Adler

The competition is organised by the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation SPRIND (Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen), which promotes innovation and breakthrough technologies in various sectors through competitions, project challenges, and other tools. This time, the focus is on fully autonomous flying robots, as is evident from its name, SPRIND Funke Fully Autonomous Flight. This area of research has great potential for future use in, for example, transport, security of objects or rescue operations. The Czech team is officially participating in the competition under the Fly4Future banner, joining their forces with exceptionally talented students of FEE CTU, namely Ing. Michal Werner, Ing. Tomáš Musil, Bc. David Čapek and Bc. Ondřej Franek.

The competition scenario is motivated by a search and rescue task; the drone must reach the desired location completely autonomously, pick up a 20x20x20 cm object weighing 1.5 kg and move it to another location. The weight of the flying robot itself must also not exceed 25 kg. The drones will have to cope with the absence of a GPS signal and a challenging outdoor environment; they will move in urban and forested terrain as well as in open spaces. Thus, the ability to avoid obstacles and navigate by points at high speed and over longer distances will be important. And in fact the teams only know part of the brief in advance. The complete instructions are only given to them on the spot, so their flexibility and responsiveness are important.

The competition is exceptional in the fact that the state-of-the-art solutions require unique knowledge, which only a few research teams in the world possess. The key technology of autonomous drones is the research subject of three PhD students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering CTU, and that is why Fly4Future invited them to cooperate and hired them to participate in the competition. … … The students will therefore significantly help to develop a successful solution and at the same time will have a unique opportunity to test their research under non-standard conditions. It is very difficult to get permission to fly fully autonomous AI-controlled robots without visual contact from the operator, but SPRIND has obtained an exemption for this competition at the Erding Air Base. This is thus crucial for the research results and its impact, and it will also help our students greatly in their publishing activities. Martin Saska Fly4Future Co-founder & CTO; Assoc. Prof. & Head of the MRS FEE-CTU.