15.07.2024European PhD Award for Elia Kaufmann

Elia Kaufmann presented his PhD thesis «Learning Vision-Based Agile Flight: From Simulation to the Real World» during the European Control Conference 2024 and won the European PhD Award on Systems and Control 2023.

Elia contributed novel, theoretically-sound methods, based on input and output abstractions, to transfer knowledge between platforms and domains, applied to train deep sensorimotor policies for autonomous, vision-based drone racing, acrobatics, and navigation in the wild. He demonstrated that a control policy trained entirely in simulation can push real-world, autonomous, vision-based quadrotors to their physical limits and even outrace the best human pilots.