Department of Automatic Control and Robotics

3 x 1st place for High Flyers at Droniada 2021!

Droniad has been showcasing the technological possibilities of Industry 4.0 since 2014, with a focus on drones, robotics, data communication, geoinformatics, information analysis systems, electronics and aviation. Academic and Open teams take part in the competition to present their solutions in practice in front of potential investors. The competition task scenarios are based on "real-life" situations where drones can provide real support.

This year's edition of the competition was aimed at preparing young cadres to support environmental protection and precision agriculture. This year, the competition was held on 28.06-03.07 in Poznan at the airport EPPG Kąkolewo, and Silesian University of Technology was represented by the Interdepartmental Scientific Association of Unmanned Flying Objects High Flyers in the following composition: Izabela Stępień, Jacek Grzybowski, Paweł Piórkowski, Dawid Rudy, Jakub Tomczak, Jakub Zeifert, Krzysztof Lewandowski and Marcel Król. This year's competition included three competitions: the presentation of an unmanned flying system (BSL), identification of areas occupied by plant disease pathogens (the "Three Colours" competition) and the detection of scab and powdery mildew in the orchard, followed by their precise spraying with plant protection chemicals simulated by paintballs (the "Tree of Life" competition). The High Flyers team won respectively:

2nd place - for BSL presentation,
I place - in the "Three Colors" competition,
First place in the "Tree of Life" competition.

As a result, our team won the first place in the general classification and received the main prize of 20 thousand zlotys, which was funded by Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) and two special prizes of 2.5 thousand zlotys each from Research Network Łukasiewicz - Institute of Aviation.

Second place was won by the AKL team from the Wroclaw University of Technology, while the third place went to the AGH Drone Engineering team from Krakow. Congratulations!

"It should be noted that for the first time in the history of Droniad one of the teams successfully performed a mission in the intensifying rain. It was High Flyers, thus proving that they fulfilled one of the conditions of the regulations about the readiness to launch a drone in the drizzle lasting for 15 minutes. At the same time, all six teams that took part in the field competitions coped quite well with the strong wind and showed cold blood in emergency situations like Poznan University of Technology and SkyCrew." - inform competition organizers on their website https://www.5zywiolow.pl/wyniki-konkursu-technologicznego-droniada-2021/#

We thank the organizers for the great atmosphere and congratulate all the teams.

People involved in the preparations: Michał Nerwiński, Łukasz Ungier, Jakub Świętek, Szymon Nowacki.

Supervisors of the High Flyers Scientific Group: Roman Czyba, PhD, prof. (Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science), Piotr Czekalski, PhD, (Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science),
Marcin Lemanowicz, Ph.D., Professor of Silesian University (Faculty of Chemistry).