An Egyptian engineering student and his Syrian teammate have won first place in the Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Competition at Türkiye’s TEKNOFEST technology festival, developing solutions for object detection and drone navigation.
Abdullah Osama, a fourth-year mechatronics engineering student at Yıldız Technical University (YTU), and his teammate Talal Bakour, a graduate of mathematics engineering, secured the top spot after competing in a process that lasted around six to seven months.
Osama said the competition involved three tasks: detecting people and vehicles, estimating a drone’s location after its GPS signal was lost, and identifying objects in supplied images.
The team progressed through several stages before reaching the final, where internet access was prohibited and participants completed four separate sessions lasting about an hour each.
"We finished seventh in the semifinals, but we came first in the final,” Osama said, adding that the team used the same algorithms in both stages despite the different conditions.
Osama said the team’s success brought a strong sense of relief after months of intensive preparation.
"When I checked the results, I saw that we had come first. Thank God, I was very happy. But the strongest feeling was relief rather than happiness because we had worked really hard. In recent months, we had barely slept,” he said.
Osama said their project could have applications in security, traffic management and the defense industry. The system’s ability to detect people and vehicles could support monitoring operations, while estimating a drone’s position after GPS disruption could be useful in situations where satellite navigation signals are unavailable.
"We believe our work could make significant contributions to Türkiye’s defense industry,” he said.
Osama said he initially worried that his limited Turkish would make communication difficult when he first came to Türkiye, but he learned the language in a short time.
He also said he did not experience major cultural differences between Türkiye and Egypt, noting that both countries share a Muslim cultural background.
Looking ahead, Osama said he wants to continue developing his skills and hopes the project will benefit Türkiye and other Muslim-majority countries.
"I want our project to benefit not only Türkiye but all Muslim countries,” he said, adding that he aims to gain more experience and achieve greater success in the future.
Osama also said he had secured an internship at Turkish defense technology company Baykar and was due to begin the following week.
Although he hopes to build a career in the broader defense industry, he described working at Baykar as a particular goal.
"I want to gain experience there, improve myself and hopefully work there in the future,” he said.