Team PULP wins the first Nanocopter AI challenge

The PULP team, composed of a group of researchers from IDSIA USI-SUPSI, Università di Bologna and TII Abu Dhabi, won the 1st Nanocopter AI challenge. The international competition was held in Delft (The Netherlands) on 13 September.

The teams were tasked with developing a palm-sized quadrotor's intelligence to enable autonomous navigation in an unknown environment cluttered with fixed and moving obstacles. The PULP team was ranked first, beating teams from Brazil, Spain, and the Netherlands, thanks to onboard artificial intelligence capable of long collision-free flights. They scored a remarkable 110 meters autonomous flight in 5 minutes, avoiding all moving obstacles.

The PULP team was the first collaboration between research institutions at the forefront of nano-robotics research and innovation. The IDSIA part of the team was led by Dr Daniele Palossi and composed by Elia Cereda (PhD student), who was on the field in Delft, and the support team in Lugano: Gabriele Abbate (researcher) and Prof. Alessandro Giusti.