FAI Global Technical Partner Noosphere is a world leader in the fields of scientific research and technology. Its main role for the Federation has been to create a cutting edge event management system called eNavigator, which aims to provide everything needed to organise and host a world class air sports competition.

The system’s applications include creating event websites, integrating with FAI databases, receiving scores from external scoring systems, and registering competitors – a function that will be used at the 2019 FAI World Drone Racing Championship Grand Final in December,  following the success of the system at the 2018 FAI World Drone Racing Championships and at The World Games 2017.

The next step is to create a version of the system that can be used at all FAI competitions, and to ensure the system is ready to handle the FAI’s flagship event: the multi-sport FAI World Air Games in 2022.

We have interviewed Yuriy Letser (picture), Noosphere Chief Technical Officer:

What did it mean for you to be part of the organisation of the first FAI World Drone Racing Championships in 2018?

I have about 20 years of experience developing IT projects of various scales, but the FAI World Drone Racing Championships was quite a challenge for me because of its visibility, its size, and the number of different products and services involved under the hood. It was a big responsibility for our team to ensure that event ran smoothly, and that any problems were solved immediately without competitors or the public noticing. We are very proud that we succeeded in this, helping to make it such a memorable event. We are now working hard on the 2019 FAI World Drone Racing Championship Grand Final to make it another success.

You have been involved in the partnership with FAI since the very beginning – how has it evolved in terms of collaboration, technical solutions and services?

In the beginning, it took some time for us to completely understand the FAI’s needs. We started by adapting selected pieces of our software for international competitions. Now we have a solid solution that covers all stages of events such as the FAI World Drone Racing Championships, and is completely integrated with our time tracking software. I would say that during last couple of years, we have learned how to provide the IT solutions for any FAI event. However, at Noosphere we believe that our cooperation can go even further. For example, by establishing a new award to recognise excellence in space research.

Noosphere is involved in more and more FAI projects. Which new tools are you developing for the future?

At the moment, we are working on scaling up our IT solution to be ready for the next FAI World Air Games in Turkey. We need to configure the system to support more FAI disciplines, and to deal with multiple locations and simultaneous competitions. We are also testing a standalone version of our eNavigator system that any event organiser can use in the field, even if they do not have an Internet connection.

Photo credit: Noosphere