Prague is not only an amazing historical city with a wealth of monuments, excellent gastronomy, cordial residents, and a wide range of events. It is also a modern and innovative science hub. Prague excels in many fields, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, biomedicine, low-carbon technologies, data technologies and selected creative industries, providing ideal opportunities for holding conventions and conferences with the matching topics.
In the 34th edition of the Innovative Prague you will learn about the latest advances in space research, including drones that imitate flocks of birds, robotic dog MARV and you will be amazed by the latest application of AI in medicine, business, but also in how mathematics is tought.
Up to the clouds and higher
How to achieve excellence in the heights? That is a question that scientists at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University are puzzled by. Their team has been trying to develop highly advanced drones with domestic or European components and software for a long time. These so-called guards will be used to control and protect highly critical infrastructures. The current solution using mesh communication is the first ever combination in this area. In cooperation with biologists, they are also developing drones inspired by flocks of birds, which will be able to fly in swarms in a coordinated way and react quickly to changes in the environment while maintaining formation.
Czech space research seems to be accompanied by a great deal of luck, in addition to skill. Scientists led by the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic managed to capture the ultraviolet spectrum of a meteor from the stratosphere for the first time during the MORANA mission. The primary goal, however, was to test the FREYA hyperspectral camera, which is being developed as a purely Czech project for the future satellite network of CubeSats. The camera will be used to observe meteors, cosmic dust and light phenomena in the atmosphere from places where ground-based observatories cannot see. The next step will be testing it in orbit before deploying it to the CubeSat network.
AI and robotics are at home in Prague
A new project for the involvement of AI not only in companies but also in public administration was created at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of the Czech Technical University. The National Centre for Artificial Intelligence currently brings together 36 partners and works with a budget of more than CZK 500 million. The main goal is to put AI solutions into practice in individual fields and in specific companies and institutions.
The effective use of AI in practice is also the focus of a startup founded by a group of young people from Prague’s American Academy that has developed a new way of studying mathematics using AI. CogniMath connects the areas of advanced mathematics and combines its study areas into one student platform. At the same time, it provides a way of learning that is not based on memorization, but on understanding logical mathematical procedures. The project has already attracted investors and the expert jury of the AI Initiative program. In the future it wants to head directly to school teaching.
Oddin.gg and ValkaAI, a Nordic mythology in the Czech concept of sister companies that take the world by storm. Their AI avatars are supposed to be able to react in real time and hold a conversation. ValkaAI has long been striving to create a platform for creating video-on-demand content where avatars will react emotionally to the created environment and situation in real time like a human viewer. The most recent goal is to bring avatars to the world of e-sports in an imaginary commentary chair. During the Counter-Strike tournament, Avatar tried to comment on the match in real time, with an emphasis on understanding the context and emotions. The possibilities of artificial intelligence are in commenting on a wide range of es-ports, and gaining early know-how is therefore crucial.
The Science Fair took place in Prague again, and this year the station of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University (FEE CTU) was teeming with robots of all kinds. Among the extremely interesting ones is the robotic “dog” MARV, which specializes in rescue operations and search for the injured in difficult terrain. As part of the Defence Research Day 2026, FEE CTU demonstrated various possibilities for future warfare. One of the main attractions was the Taros 6×6 autonomous ground vehicle designed for operating in risky terrain and other systems for detecting crisis situations. The research also includes the development of virtual reality for training robots, with the long-term goal of increasing their autonomy and reducing dependence on human intervention.
In May, FEE CTU also opened a new quantum laboratory, where their quantum communication polygon enables integration into the pan-European quantum communication infrastructure. Quantum communication is considered, especially because of its security, to be a revolutionary way of transmitting information, and Prague is not far behind.elek
Where has Prague’s healthcare and medical research progressed?
A research team of the Czech Academy of Sciences has described a new way of bacteria neutralizing the antibiotic rifampicin. The antibiotic is phosphorylated by the enzyme rifampicin phosphotransferase, thus limiting its action in the cell and preventing successful treatment. What is new, however, is the discovery that this is to some extent an ability of a protein originally functioning for transporting sugars into cells. The discovery thus shows how bacteria can evolutionarily transform common cellular proteins into defense mechanisms against antibiotics.
The news of Prague’s healthcare system is bearing fruit. The first Czech winner was recorded in the of Global Startup Awards: in competition with more than 70 thousand participants. The winning Kardi Ai focuses on long-term ECG monitoring and uses artificial intelligence to alert on cardiac arrhythmias and unusual behavior of the human heart. The founders of the startup, cardiologist Tomáš Skála and entrepreneur Stephen Burke, succeeded in this year’s finals in Malta in the Best HealthTech Startup category, and it is not surprising, as they already cooperate with more than forty hospitals not only in the Czech Republic.
Researchers from the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic came up with an unpleasant finding in their research, which they carried out in cooperation with Polish and Slovenian colleagues. Nanoplastics are all around us and can never be completely avoided, but the novelty is that they have the ability to build into the protective layer of lungs and gradually weaken it. The team thus draws attention to a relatively fundamental issue of public health, and therefore to the reduction of the production and use of plastics.
The MediApp app came up with a practical invention, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze data on blood pressure or the average amount of sugar in blood and quickly connect with a doctor if necessary. The BioScan function has already received MDR Category 1 certification and determines the health status according to a facial scan within one minute. Meddi hub, which runs the application and specializes in telemedicine, is trying to deploy the application across the board in their countries of operation including the Czech Republic.
Would you like to learn more interesting facts on innovation? Browse through the previous three issues of Innovative Prague: