Leonardo Drone Contest: seven Italian universities, including the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, competing to design drones capable of autonomous flight. The final round will take place in Turin on 8 and 9 November
Seven Italian universities (Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano, Università di Bologna, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, Università di Napoli Federico II e Politecnico di Bari) will compete on 8 and 9 November in Turin in the final round of the 4th edition of the Drone Contest Challenge 2023, the competition managed by Leonardo Spa to design prototypes of drones capable of flying autonomously and without a navigation system.
The Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna is represented by a team from the Institute of Mechanical Intelligence composed of PhD students Michael Mugnai, Massimo Teppati Losè, coordinated by tutor and researcher Massimo Satler together to Carlo Alberto Avizzano, associate professor of Automatics at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna.
The challenge consists in the cooperation of heterogeneous autonomous agents, namely a drone, a rover and a camera that will have to cooperate to explore an unknown indoor environment in order to identify and locate targets of interest. The teams will have to develop their platforms independently in terms of both hardware and software aspects and in compliance with a regulation that constrains certain design choices (such as the possibility of using or not using certain technologies, sensors, etc.) and sets spending limits for individual platforms.
The competition is divided into 3 tests of 20 minutes each divided into 2 days, in which, in turn, each team will have to identify a series of targets arranged, by the organiser, in the environment not known beforehand. The task of the multi-agent system is to be able to move autonomously in unknown environments and without a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite system) signal.
The seven teams from the universities will present their systems in a context aimed at creating a closer link between business and research, under the banner of sharing innovative ideas and projects in the field of artificial intelligence applied to dronistics.
At the end of the last round, on the afternoon of 9 November, the winning team will be announced at an event where the results achieved and the scientific activities carried out by all participants in preparation for the competition will also be presented.
