{"id":191867,"date":"2025-04-18T09:48:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T00:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/?post_type=research-achieve&#038;p=191867"},"modified":"2026-04-13T05:18:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:18:50","slug":"ee-professor-hyunchul-shims-team-wins-3rd-place-at-a2rl-autonomous-drone-racing-competition","status":"publish","type":"research-achieve","link":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/research-achieve\/ee-professor-hyunchul-shims-team-wins-3rd-place-at-a2rl-autonomous-drone-racing-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"EE Professor Hyunchul Shim&#8217;s Team Wins 3rd Place at A2RL Autonomous Drone Racing Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">EE Professor Hyunchul Shim and his research team secured an impressive <strong>3rd place overall<\/strong> at the <strong>A2RL (Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League) Drone Championship League (DCL)<\/strong>, held on <strong>April 12, 2025<\/strong>, with sponsorship from the <strong>UAE government<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/omncgCLqqWA\" width=\"1236\" height=\"695\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The competition took place at the <strong>ADNEC Marina in Abu Dhabi<\/strong>, where 14 finalist teams from around the world competed in a highly challenging indoor arena with 12 racing gates. Notably, the race required fully autonomous drone flights using only a <strong>single onboard monocular camera<\/strong>, without relying on external cameras, LiDAR, or GPS \u2014 underscoring the high level of technological difficulty. The event featured a <strong>total prize purse of USD 1 million<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The contest comprised four segments:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\"><strong>Time trials<\/strong> for shortest lap time<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\"><strong>Head-to-head tournament<\/strong> against professional drone racing pilots<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\"><strong>Four-team simultaneous autonomous flight race<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\"><strong>High-speed two-drone drag races<\/strong> in a mirrored head-on format<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Professor Shim\u2019s team \u2014 consisting of <strong>Donghoon Han (team lead), Ph.D. candidate Maulana Azhari, and M.S. students Jein Yoo and Sungjoon Park<\/strong> \u2014 demonstrated outstanding performance by leveraging their <strong>proprietary vision-inertial localization<\/strong> and <strong>agile flight control<\/strong> technologies. As a result, the team was awarded <strong>USD 105,000<\/strong> in prize money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-191862 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_9847-tile.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"601\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The competition was organized by <strong>A2RL (Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League)<\/strong> with support from the <strong>UAE government<\/strong>, following a global qualifier held in <strong>Fall 2024<\/strong>, through which <strong>14 teams<\/strong> were selected. Of these, <strong>8 teams advanced to the semifinals<\/strong>, and Professor Shim\u2019s team was ultimately selected as one of the four <strong>finalists<\/strong>, alongside top-tier teams from <strong>TU Delft (Netherlands)<\/strong>, <strong>TII (Technology Innovation Institute, UAE)<\/strong>, and <strong>CTU (Czech Technical University)<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Demonstrating consistent and reliable performance, the KAIST team secured <strong>3rd place overall<\/strong>. Notably, they achieved 3<sup>rd<\/sup> place in time trial, <strong>2nd place<\/strong> in the world\u2019s <strong>first-ever simultaneous autonomous drone race(by four finalist drones)<\/strong>, and <strong>2nd place<\/strong> in the <strong>head-to-head drag racing<\/strong> event, in which two drones launched toward each other in mirrored high-speed sprints.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\"><strong>Professor Hyunchul Shim is widely recognized as a pioneer in autonomous drone racing<\/strong>, having organized the <strong>world\u2019s first autonomous drone racing competition<\/strong> at <strong>IROS 2016<\/strong>, one of the two premier international conferences in robotics. His team won <strong>1st place in 2016<\/strong> and <strong>2nd place in 2018<\/strong> at that event. In <strong>2019<\/strong>, they also secured <strong>3rd place<\/strong> at the <strong>AlphaPilot Challenge<\/strong> hosted by <strong>Lockheed Martin<\/strong> in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Furthermore, Professor Shim\u2019s team achieved <strong>back-to-back victories in 2019 and 2020<\/strong> in the <strong>AI Grand Challenge (indoor drone flight category)<\/strong> organized by Korea\u2019s <strong>Ministry of Science and ICT<\/strong>, resulting in <strong>over KRW 2.4 billion (approx. USD 2 million)<\/strong> as follow-up research funding. These consistent successes across prestigious international and national competitions underscore his leadership and excellence in the field of autonomous aerial robotics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The <strong>A2RL Drone Championship League (DCL)<\/strong> marks the <strong>fifth large-scale robotics competition<\/strong> hosted with support from the <strong>UAE government<\/strong> since the <strong>2017 Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC)<\/strong>. While Prof. Shim\u2019s team attended these competitions from the beginning with good results, his team won the second place at the <strong>MBZIRC Maritime Challenge<\/strong>, in collaboration with <strong>Professor Jinwhan Kim\u2019s team from\u00a0 School of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\"><strong>From practical application\u2019s perspective, camera-based autonomous drone racing<\/strong> is gaining global attention not only as an advanced form of <strong>E-sports<\/strong>, but also as a critical enabling technology for <strong>first-person view (FPV) drones<\/strong>, which have emerged as game-changing tools in modern warfare. This highlights the growing strategic importance of this field.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-191864 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_9878-e1744936286947.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"900\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Professor Shim remarked, <em>\u201cAfter the earlier competitions were halted due to COVID-19, a significant amount of time passed, and we had to rebuild the team with new students. Despite the difficulty of conducting tests under many constraints including test facilities, we developed an original localization and control system from scratch. Even when we encountered unexpected challenges on-site, we did not give up and continued our research and adaptation within the limited preparation time, which ultimately allowed us to outperform many top international teams.\u201d<\/em> He added, <em>\u201cIn upcoming competitions, we will strive to deliver <strong>world-class results with overwhelming capabilities<\/strong>.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>662<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":191866,"template":"","research_category":[347],"class_list":["post-191867","research-achieve","type-research-achieve","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","research_category-ai-machine-learning-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-achieve\/191867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-achieve"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/research-achieve"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"research_category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ee.presscat.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research_category?post=191867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}