In his doctoral dissertation, Jiří Horyna focused on how to ensure reliable cooperation within autonomous drone swarms even when individual vehicles lose the ability to determine their precise position. The methods he developed demonstrate that neighboring robots can use mutual observations to help estimate their positions and maintain coordinated flight even in the event of a partial or complete loss of localization data. The results contribute to improving the robustness of autonomous robotic systems and have applications in areas such as industrial inspection, emergency response operations, and safety-critical systems.
The Joseph Fourier Prize for Computer Sciences is awarded annually to recognize the best doctoral research in computer science. In addition to a financial award of CZK 65,000, Jiří Horyna also received a scholarship for a one-month research stay in France.
This achievement builds on the long-standing success of the Multi-Robot Systems group at the Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU. Last year, the first prize was awarded to Dr. Pavel Petráček, while second prizes in previous years were received by Dr. Tomáš Báča (2022) and Dr. Robert Pěnička (2021). These awards confirm the consistently high quality of research that the MRS group has been conducting in the field of autonomous robotics.
