Two teams from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST made a splendid achievement of winning second and third places at the recent 'Autonomous Flight Technology Competition in Battlefield Situations.'

Organized by South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) and the Defense Science Research Institute, this competition was part of a future-challenging Defense technology R&D project in South Korea, which was promoted to create a new concept weapon system. The competition aims to develop drone autonomous flight technology that can drive in complex indoor environments without GPS or pilot help. This year marks its second anniversary.

A total of 15 teams participated in the preliminary round for evaluation of technologies necessary for autonomous flight such as ‘Simultaneous Localization and Mapping’ (SLAM, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithm and target detection technology in March 2021.

Only 6 teams were finally shortlisted for the finals, which includes KSAJ (KAIST), K-Drone (KAIST), ASL (UNIST), HMCL (UNIST), UB-PI (UB-PI Co., Ltd.), Team Nice (Narma Co., Ltd.), and Hancom e-space. The finals were held at the ICC Hotel in Daejeon on October 13, 2021.

Professor Hyondong Oh's team and Professor Cheolhyeon Kwon's team won second and third places, respectively. The first place went to UB-PI, a company that specialized in drones.