More than 150 students from a number of countries attended the 2023 Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems, where they learned how to program drones. The event took place from 3 to 6 July at the FEE building on Charles Square in Prague, and on 7 July it culminated with outdoor challenges on Císařský ostrov.
During the four “school” days, students listened to lectures by leading experts and tried programming cooperative UAVs, the development of which is the focus the Multi-robot Systems Group from the Department of Cybernetics of FEL CTU.
The head of the group Associate Professor Martin Saska pointed out that the main star of this year’s program was Dario Floreano from EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland – one of the most famous roboticists in Europe, whose research focuses on the study of nature-inspired UAV swarms. Other notable speakers included Javier Alonso-Mora of Delft University of Technology, author of groundbreaking research in the field of cognitive cooperative robots.
The students also analyzed procedures for effective collaboration between robots. A key stage was testing in the Gazebo computer simulator, which allowed them to verify the algorithms used. They then tested their functionality in the Flying Robot Competition on Císařský ostrov. While last year’s summer school participants were tasked with taking pictures of various elements of the energy transmission system with a camera, this year’s assignment was to inspect photovoltaic power plants.
The Summer School of Multirobotic Systems was held for the fourth time this year. In 2021 it was not held due to the covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 it was held in a hybrid form.
More information here.