From February 12 - 14, 2024 the annual tournament of pre-university educational organizations of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation "Engineers of the Future" was held in St. Petersburg on the basis of the Military Academy of Communications named after S.M. Budyonny. Competitions were traditionally held in 5 competencies:
• "Mechatronics"
• "Milling machines with numerical control"
• "Numerically controlled lathes"
• "Cybersecurity"
• "Ground robotics"
This year SPC RAS functioned as a supervisor of the last presented direction. Tournament Competitions in the ground–based robotics, whose participants were asked to solve a number of tasks for managing ground-based robotic platforms, were run by staff members of the APC and TBDSS laboratories: Ekaterina Cherskikh and Maxim Letenkov. Prior to the start of the competition, the participants attended a lecture on the technical equipment and algorithms of the robots they were invited to work with. The platform was controlled based on the readings of infrared or ultrasonic sensors, as well as by the wheelset engines. At solving the tasks, the programming of the platforms was executed in Python. Teams from various pre-university military educational institutions competed in this competence. The guys coped with all the proposed tasks in a set time, and also were able to try their hand at controlling the robot using technical vision beyond the competition framework. An exhibition area was also organized within the event, where SPC RAS, together with the Engineering Garage Department of GUAP, presented the latest developments in the field of unmanned aircraft systems of various configurations.
