Russian High School Students Show President Putin an Autonomous Obstacle-Avoiding Drone
Built by teenagers, the drone can independently navigate gates and obstacles along a changing trajectory—an example of how advanced robotics is moving into classrooms.
Students from the Phystech Lyceum demonstrated a self-built drone to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The project was created by high school students David Safarov, Andrey Dyatlov, Evgeny Nazarov, and Artyom Chernyshev, according to Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov, who reported the presentation on his Telegram channel.
The drone is designed to autonomously fly through gates and other obstacles along a predefined route. Crucially, the trajectory changes with each attempt, requiring the system to continuously adapt while staying within set motion parameters.
From Classroom Project to International Competition
With this project, the students competed in the international FIRA Air competition held in Iran in 2025. The team now plans to present the drone at additional contests. At the same time, the students are already working on a new unmanned aerial vehicle.
The project fits into a broader wave of student-led engineering initiatives gaining visibility in Russia. Earlier reports noted that a Moscow high school senior designed an affordable smart cane for visually impaired users.
Separately, it was also reported that a school in Yakutsk hired its first robot waiter to help students on cafeteria duty deliver meals on trays.
Together, these projects point to a growing emphasis on hands-on robotics and applied AI at the pre-university level, where experimental hardware is increasingly treated not as a novelty, but as a platform for real-world problem solving.
