Sovereign Aerospace: GPS-Denied Navigation & Drone Detection | Pre-Hackathon Webinar #3 (EUDIS NL)
- HACKATHONS
Martijn Seijger
- 0
- 7 minutes read
On 2 October, the third pre-hackathon webinar took off with a focus on the third challenge of the hackathon, Sovereign Aerospace. The webinar put a specific focus on the topics of the operation of drones in GPS denied areas (jamming), and on the timely identification of drones. Two emerging companies, both with hackathon roots, shared their approaches and engaged in an open Q&A with participants.
Speaker highlights
Vydar: AI navigation in GPS-denied environments
Benji Metz explained how jamming degrades UAV mission success and how Vydar’s approach uses onboard vision to infer geolocation without GNSS. Key points:
- Image-to-coordinate pipeline delivering metre-level estimates on constrained hardware.
- European-sourced components and SWaP-optimised design for cost and power efficiency.
- Modular stack that can process night-vision or thermal inputs when available.
Discussion touched on applicability beyond drones and update strategies for systems at the edge. - European Sovereignty
EyePlane: Building a synthetic dataset for drone detection
Tsjerk Walinga introduced a hackathon sub-challenge: create a fully synthetic dataset to detect and classify drones from ground-based cameras. The team will provide boilerplate training code and a real-world test set. Focus areas:
- Closing the domain gap between clean synthetic images and noisy real footage.
- Managing distractors in the sky such as birds, insects and aircraft.
- Techniques to increase realism, including varied 3D models, compression artefacts and creative generation methods
Multiple teams can join this sub-challenge.
Watch the Recording
If you missed the webinar, you can watch the full recording by clicking below.
If you would like to receive the presentation slides, please fill in this form: https://share.hsforms.com/1LZjI30JXRTiEQ4JTGLwMxA4m0lb
What’s Next: Upcoming Webinar
Open Stage & Q&A
A chance to test your ideas, ask questions, and get feedback before the hackathon weekend.
Date: 9 October 2025
The final pre-hackathon webinar will take place on 9 October 2025, giving participants one last opportunity to connect before the hackathon weekend begins. This session will be an Open Stage & Q&A, designed to help you prepare in a practical way. It offers space to test your ideas, raise questions, and get direct feedback from the organisers.
Alongside clarifying the three hackathon challenges and the weekend process, the session will also open the floor to participants and start-ups. Those who wish can take a short stage to present their solutions or areas of expertise, making it a useful moment to meet potential teammates or find inspiration from others.
A special highlight of this webinar will be the participation of DroneAid, the volunteer collective known for teaching veterans, engineers, and enthusiasts to build drones that are then donated for use in real-world missions. They will share insights into the kinds of drones they develop, the impact of their work, and a preview of the hands-on Drone Assembly Workshop they will host during the hackathon weekend.
DroneAid Brings Hands-On Drone Expertise to the EUDIS Defence Hackathon Netherlands
The webinar is organised as a Dutch local initiative by Groundstation.Space, with support from national partners, and promises to be a valuable session for anyone joining the hackathon.
Featured Image: Freepik
