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.