Fly4Future Wins SPRIND Funke Competition

Fly4Future in cooperation with the Multi-robot Systems Group from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU (MRS FEE CTU), has won the final race of the SPRIND Funke Fully Autonomous Flight competition.

The final race took place from 16th to 20th September 2024 at the Erding Air Base in Germany, the Czech team beat 8 other teams from all over the world. The challenge was to develop a drone that would be able to fly fully autonomously and without the use of GPS to a given location, pick up an object and carry it to safety, all in challenging conditions.

The competition scenario was motivated by a search and rescue task; the drone had to 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 could also not exceed 25 kg. The competition route was unique with its length of 9.5 km and very challenging terrain that reflected real-life conditions; the route led between buildings, through the forest, under a bridge and through a water wall. As the drones could not use GPS signals, they oriented themselves by 25 pre-determined stations, which were marked with a flag and a flare. Then, at the end of the route, individual packages were placed, from which the drone had to autonomously select the one that belonged to its team using on-board cameras.

Before the final race, test flights were held at the air base, where the individual teams fine-tuned their solutions. The Fly4Future team was practically the only team that managed to complete most of the route entirely autonomously and without the GPS signal, thus securing the victory. However, the Czech victorious campaign did not occur without complications.

After identifying the third waypoint, our drone encountered a hardware problem. This probably happened because a new unique prototype was built for this competition and the team did not have the opportunity to test it as thoroughly as we normally do with our products. So, under heavy load, the drone’s motor failed, and the drone fell to the ground and broke.

The accident at first seemed fatal, only…our team did not give up!

Thanks to the great cooperation of the team members, they managed to disassemble the entire drone, replace the broken components and reassemble the drone in a record 30 minutes. The drone was then able to return to the race and successfully complete the route.

Overall, the task of the competition was extremely demanding and in the time limit of two hours and using only one battery, it was almost impossible to accomplish everything the organizers required. During the final, they then acknowledged that the competition was designed in such a way that it was virtually unsolvable with the current technology, the given budget and within the given time limit. Therefore, the Fly4Future team along with the other teams were allowed to change the battery during the competition so that the drone could continue in the competition. Nonetheless, their winning solution signifies a remarkable step forward. During the competition, German investors and those interested in this technology had the opportunity to see that Fly4Future, in cooperation with MRS FEE CTU, can build basically any drone that surpasses other solutions with its extraordinary characteristics.

But the competition is of course also beneficial from an academic and scientific point of view. Among the participants, there were also several top universities from Germany, which could see how advanced the systems developed at MRS FEE CTU are. The participating students will also find the competition a great help in their studies and research. Thus, it can be expected that many scientific articles and publications will emerge from this project, especially on the topic of artificial intelligence and long-range path localisation and mapping.

The team from Fly4Future and MRS FEE CTU has been working on its solution since the beginning of 2024 when it was selected for the competition. Then in April, 14 teams presented their results in the first round, also held at the Erding Air Base, and 9 finalists emerged. During the week of September 16th to 20th, there was just one winning team, and it was flying under the Fly4Future banner. They won the competition thanks to their excellence in the field of robotics, unwavering dedication, outstanding teamwork, and innovative thinking. They defied the odds and accomplished the seemingly impossible.

The organiser is 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 was 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 or rescue operations, and therefore participation was financially supported by the organisers. During the competition, the teams shared up to 70,000 euros between them in the first phase, and then up to 80,000 euros in the second phase. These funds were earmarked for research and development so that the emergence of innovative technologies would not fail due to the lack of funding.

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Related links: CTU Press Release