Ukrainian youth amaze the world with their innovative ideas. This time, Maksym Kostyshyn, a first-year student at the Department of Software, the Institute of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Lviv Polytechnic, and his colleague Roman Zakharia, a second-year student at the National Technical University of Ukraine «Ihor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute» (PBCS team), won the Demo Day IdeasLab 6.0, a prestigious startup support program based at the CfE Accelerator UCU.
– Tell us about your project Universal System for Guidance of Collective Infantry Weapons. How did you come up with the idea?
– Our project is a guidance system for collective infantry weapons (easel grenade launchers, mortars, etc.). In fact, it is an electronic sight. Our solution makes it possible to conduct accurate fire from closed firing positions. In fact, the importance of our solution for easel grenade launchers is difficult to understand without context: while everything is clear with mortars, grenade launcher manufacturers never foresaw that our soldiers would use them to hit point targets from closed positions, but the war realities (lack of artillery mortars, ammunition and other means) and many other factors changed the approach to combat operations. Accordingly, there was a need to use weapons in an unusual way, and our project is a technological solution to this problem. The main objectives are to save time to hit a target and increase the accuracy of fire, i.e. to save ammunition, which is critically scarce.
The idea for the project originated more than a year ago, when Roman Zakharia and I were members of the Ukrainian delegation at an international competition in Croatia. Then he suggested starting a project, I supported him, and here we are. The initial idea was a little bit different. We constantly involve the military and work on their requests. We have been actively working on the current version for six months.
The project was founded by me and Roman Zakharia. We are graduates of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, authors of several research papers, and winners of many national and international scientific and technical competitions. I think this is a significant basis for our activities. The Academy gave us great experience and skills that we use in our project.
– How do you assess the impact of your startup on the country’s defence sector? Are there any prospects for scaling your product?
– There is a trend towards saving munitions and modernising old weapons, and our system meets these criteria. As for scaling, after full development for the initial samples of weapons, we plan to expand our system to other types of weapons.
– From your experience, what advice can you give to students who are just starting to work on their ideas and want to take part in similar programs?
– Try and realise yourself. When we signed up for the IdeasLab Demo Day, we didn’t even hope to win anything as we had a military project, but it turned out to be the opposite. Nowadays, there are many opportunities to develop your ideas, so you should try and try to develop your ideas, because it will only be worse for you if you don’t take part in something that can help you develop your idea.
