It is great to see the projects presented at the FreshAIR Hackathon in Odesa continue to grow and gain international recognition.

For the second year in a row, a team of students from TH Augsburg has been among the FreshAIR winners. In 2026, their AI Cobots project took third place.

Over the past year, the team has significantly improved the solution by adding camera-based and AI-powered shape recognition, enabling the robot to identify, pick up, and move different objects more accurately. Such technologies can be applied in industrial manufacturing as well as in the reconstruction of damaged infrastructure.

It is especially valuable to see that AI Cobots has grown beyond a competition idea. Four bachelor’s theses have already been developed around the project, the team is expanding, and the work continues as part of the cooperation between TH Augsburg and Odesa Polytechnic.

We would also like to highlight the contribution of Professor Mykhailo Viktorovych Lobachev, Director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Odesa Polytechnic. Thanks to his consistent efforts, the partnership with TH Augsburg continues to develop, international student teams are being formed, and FreshAIR is becoming a space where university cooperation turns into tangible technological solutions.

This is exactly why Odesa IT Family, together with the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Odesa Polytechnic, continues to develop FreshAIR: to bring young talents from Ukraine and Europe together, enable them to collaborate, and help turn hackathon ideas into real projects.

We thank TH Augsburg for its participation and continued commitment to developing this cooperation, as well as our partners EPAM Systems, AUTODOC, and Capgemini for supporting young talent.

Congratulations to the team on taking third place, and we wish them continued success in developing AI Cobots!

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