Prestigious award for our scientists!

The honoured solution is a system supporting the search for missing persons in vast open areas thanks to computer analysis of images taken by drone. It is the work of prof. Tomasz Niedzielski and his team. This is the SARUAV system for detecting people in aerial photographs, developed and implemented by SARUAV sp. z o.o., a company operating under the patronage of the University of Wrocław and bound to the university by a prototype licence agreement (spin-off).

Its creators – prof. Tomasz Niedzielski representing SARUAV sp. z o.o. and the University of Wrocław, dr Mirosława Jurecka and dr Bartłomiej Miziński representing the company – were among the winners of the competition organised by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development.- Competition was tough, comments prof. Tomasz Niedzielski. – This distinction is very important for the company, the use of the ‘Polish Product of the Future’ logo makes our product even more credible among customers, and please remember that our customers are very demanding, emergency services need reliable and proven tools.

Two years ago, thanks to the invention of Prof. Niedzielski and the team, a man’s life was saved. During a search operation lasting almost 24 hours in the Low Beskids, the SARUAV system was used, which indicated the potential location of the missing person on aerial photographs taken by a camera installed on a drone. The system was used by rescuers of the Bieszczady GOPR Group.

This action showed that geo-information technologies can have a very wide range of applications and pointed in the direction of their use by, for example, crisis management services.- This is the best example of what commercialisation of research results should look like. It is a unique project, because the system from idea to implementation and use in almost the whole of Europe was realised by one team of scientists, believes Maciej Kamiński, director of the Technology Transfer Centre at the University of Wrocław.

The aim of the PARP ‘Polish Product of the Future’ competition is to distinguish and promote the most innovative products and technologies, which have the potential to be present on the domestic and global markets.

This year, 148 innovative projects were submitted to the 25th anniversary edition of the Polish Product of the Future Competition. Most applications, as many as 127, were submitted by entrepreneurs.The competition is organised in three categories: product of the future of higher education institutions and science; product of the future of the entrepreneur; joint product of the future of higher education institutions and science and the entrepreneur.

The winning project was submitted in the third of these competition categories. It should be emphasised that most of these joint projects are projects by companies and research institutes or polytechnics. – The University of Wrocław is an exception here, along with the Jagiellonian University, as only two classical universities were among the co-authors of the projects awarded in this category, comments Łukasz Machaj, Vice-Rector of the University of Wrocław.

The award is also a tribute to the UWr’s activity in the area of cooperation with the social and economic environment. The University’s authorities take a number of measures – such as promoting commercialisation activities, involving practitioners in the educational process, developing a strategy for relations with graduates or organising external scholarship support for students – in order to strengthen this cooperation.

The SARUAV system has also recently won the Minister of Development and Technology’s Award for geoinformation for 2021 in the innovative solutions category.

On the SARUAV website, you can find a map of European locations where the company has already implemented the system saruav.pl

Congratulations!