Last week, a joint team from NordHero and JAMK University of Applied Sciences competed in the Drone Innovation Hackathon 2 at Nokia Arena in Tampere, Finland — and came home with a second-place finish in the Autonomous Surveillance and Rescue Challenge.
The challenge required teams to perform a surveillance task without radio signal or human control — a fully autonomous drone operation. The competition brought together international teams working on real-world drone and counter-drone challenges over three intense days (June 9–11, 2026).
The Solution: Autonomous Flight and Cloud-Powered Video Analysis
The solution had two key components: autonomous flight control and real-time cloud-based video analysis.
On the drone side, the team developed autonomous navigation capabilities for the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless — teaching it to fly independently within a given space without human control or radio signal. This involved programming flight path planning, spatial awareness, and obstacle handling so the drone could carry out a surveillance pattern on its own.
On the cloud side, the live video feed from the drone’s onboard camera was streamed to AWS for real-time analysis. This approach offloaded the heavy computation from the drone itself, allowing for more sophisticated object detection and surveillance intelligence than what onboard hardware alone could deliver.
Concept: Autonomous drone surveillance with real-time video analysis in the AWS cloud
The Build-Up
The project kicked off in early May. CrazyTown Jyväskylä provided the team with workspace and facilities for the project. The team sourced a Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless drone, camera, and all necessary components, and spent the weeks leading up to the hackathon developing and testing the solution.
A Motor Fault — and Still Second Place
The actual flight performance during the competition didn’t go perfectly. It was only after the event that the team discovered one of the drone’s motors had developed a fault at some point during testing or the competition itself. Despite this hardware setback, the team still placed second — a testament to the strength of the software solution and the cloud-based video analysis pipeline they had built.
The Team
- Ville Heikkinen
- Otto Hakuli
- Roope Kärkkäinen
- Henri Carp
The team was primarily coached by NordHero cloud architect Ville Kärkkäinen, with support from the rest of the NordHero team. NordHero also sponsored the team with Kiro licenses, enabling super-fast development throughout the project.
The NordHero & JAMK drone hackathon team with Sandra Suomäki from CrazyTown
About the Drone Innovation Hackathon
The Drone Innovation Hackathon 2 is organized by Ultrahack and brings together teams to tackle real-world drone challenges across categories including autonomous operations, FPV performance, counter-UAS detection, and signal jamming resistance. The event is supported by partners including Nokia, Patria, Elisa, Finnish Defence Forces, and the cities of Tampere and Jyväskylä.
Congratulations to the team — looking forward to the next challenge! 🚀