Bengawan UV UNS Team Achieves Success at the 2026 Indonesian Flying Robot Contest (KRTI) 2026

Surakarta — Students of Electrical Engineering at Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) have once again achieved an outstanding accomplishment through the Bengawan UV team at the 2026 Indonesian Flying Robot Contest (Kontes Robot Terbang Indonesia/KRTI). The competition, organized by the Bureau of Community Services and Cooperation (BELMAWA) of the Directorate General of Higher Education, Research, and Technology (DIKTI), was held on September 21 – 26, 2026 in the Nusantara Capital (IKN), with the UNS team securing 1st Place in the Racing Plane category and 3rd Place in the Technology Development category.

This double achievement highlights the depth of research conducted by the Bengawan UV team, which entered two aircraft this year, each employing a significantly different technical approach: one focused on speed and maneuverability, and the other on monitoring technology for humanitarian purposes.

In the Racing Plane category, the team flew AMBALAP, an aircraft developed with an emphasis on speed, aerodynamic efficiency, and maneuverability responsiveness. Its design configuration was carefully developed to enable the aircraft to achieve optimal flight performance under high-speed flight conditions while maintaining stability during sharp maneuvers on the competition course.

Every aspect of AMBALAP, from its wing shape and weight distribution to its control system, was designed to minimize aerodynamic drag without compromising stability—a technical balance that is not easy to achieve in racing plane competitions. As a result, AMBALAP delivered a competitive performance and successfully secured 1st Place in the category.

This aircraft was the result of approximately one year of intensive development by the team under the guidance of Ir. Joko Slamet Saputro, S.Pd., M.T. The lengthy development process reflects the team’s consistency and perseverance in refining the design through various flight-test iterations, performance evaluations, and technical adjustments before ultimately being ready to compete at the national level.

Meanwhile, in the Technology Development category, the team presented AKASHA MAHASURA, an aircraft developed with Tetravision, a multimodal camera system for aerial environmental observation and monitoring. This technology was specifically designed to support disaster response operations, particularly in monitoring affected areas and rapidly and accurately collecting visual information from the air.

The Tetravision system enables AKASHA MAHASURA to capture environmental data from multiple modalities simultaneously, allowing the resulting information to be more comprehensive than that provided by conventional camera systems. This approach is relevant to actual field requirements, considering that the speed and accuracy of information are crucial factors in disaster response in Indonesia, a country that is geographically vulnerable to various disaster risks.

Like AMBALAP, this aircraft was the result of approximately one year of intensive development by the team, covering the stages of system design, integration of the camera equipment with the aircraft, and functional testing of the monitoring system under various simulated field conditions. Securing 3rd Place in this category demonstrates that innovations oriented toward social benefit are capable of competing at the national level.