The Intensive program included business events, demonstration of the latest models of unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as the largest in Russia’s history drone competition.
The Intensive brought together experts in various areas, and they formulated key trends for developing various technological areas in the field of unmanned systems: UAS design, software development, aviation security and cybersecurity issues.
The Samara Region team consisted of representatives of the Regional Ministry of Economic Development and Investment, Transport of the Future LLC, and the Centre for Unmanned Systems of Samara University.
For the Samara Region, one of the main events of the Intensive business program was signing the agreement on establishment of the Research and Production Centre for Unmanned Aviation Systems “Samara”. In fact, the Samara UAS cluster will operate on the basis of this company. The protocol of the founders of the company was signed by Dmitry Peskov, Chairman of the Board of the National Technology Initiative Platform Foundation, Yury Kozarenko, CEO of the developer of the UAS “Transport of the Future Samara”, and Aleksandr Sergienko, Director of the Centre for Innovative Development and Cluster Initiatives of the Samara Region, which is the management company of the Zhiguli Valley Technopark. The Research and Production Centre (NPC) is supposed to be registered and begin its operation at the end of August 2023. The Transport of the Future Plant plans to produce agricultural drones, cargo drones with its payload capacity of 200 kg and the model range of lighter UAS weighing up to 30 kg, the set of UAS components not only for their own purposes, but also for the entire Russian market.
Over a hundred competitions of unmanned aircraft systems were held at the Intensive, as well. The competitions were divided by types – military-tactical, sports, technological ones and by participants’ levels of training. The team of the Centre for Unmanned Systems of Samara University was responsible for holding the Competition “Race of Autonomous Drones”.
“In addition to taking part in the Intensive business program, we, together with the NTI Foundation and the University of 2035, held the All-Russian Competition “Race of Autonomous Drones” at the Archipelago. Students of eight Russian universities took part in it. The Competition was organized in the new format, when not pilots, but software developers compete with each other, since the race supposed performing unmanned flights. The route with barriers is set, the participants study it and write flight algorithms, following which the drone independently, autonomously performs its flight, bypassing the barriers. The team that completed the task by spending the minimum time won”, explained David Ovakimyan, Director of the Centre for Unmanned Systems.
A large number of spectators, with Dmitry Afanasyev, Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Science of the Russian Federation, among them, watched the competitions.
Employees of the Centre for Unmanned Systems of the University were awarded cups and medals for high-level organization of the competitions.