The SpiceDrones team of Skoltech’s Space and Engineering Systems MSc students from the laboratory of intellectual and space robotics head by prof. Dzmitry Tsetserukou:  Valery Serpiva, Ekaterina Karmanova, Stepan Perminov, and Nikita Mikhailovsky won the firstDrone Team Games in the Synchronized Flight track and won a prize in Speed category.

Organized by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the Drone Team Games are an annual hackathon focusing on control algorithms for groups of multi-rotor and aircraft type unmanned vehicles.

The first Team Drone Games were held online using a real-time digital-twin simulator of real quadcopters and airplanes. The finals were broadcast live on YouTube and commented by a professional sports announcer.

A total of 69 teams from 69 Russian educational institutions competed in the professional and amateur leagues. Skoltech’s SpiceDrones performed in the professional league.

“Our team’s name is actually a play on words, since ’SpiceDrones’ sounds a bit like ‘Spice Girls’, an iconic British group famous for its vivacious and instantly recognizable music. Plus, ‘spice’ and ‘space’ sound similar. We specialize in space and, for us, space drones are associated with spaceships in science fiction,” the team members say.

“The teams received test assignments in two tracks, Synchronized Flight and Team Race. We chose the first. Our assignment was to create an algorithm that controls a group of drones on an airfield such that the drones can be rearranged into different formations as fast as possible and with a minimum number of collisions, and stay precisely in that formation while flying over the airfield. We successfully completed the first round and moved on to the final assignment with a larger number of drones and much more complex formations,” Ekaterina Karmanova explains.

We wish the team the best of luck in their future endeavors!

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