Przemysław Mariusz Kornatowski received his M.Sc. degree in Mechatronics from Warsaw University of Technology (Warsaw, Poland) in 2012.  During his Master's studies, he focused on the development of ground robots for Search&Rescue missions. 

In the years 2012 to 2015, Przemysław worked as an engineer in the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His main field of work was flying robotics, with a focus on the design and manufacture of prototypes for the project “GimBall: A resilient flying robot for semi-autonomous operation in cluttered environments.” The GimBall drone was the predecessor of the Elios 1 drone developed by the Flyability company. GimBall won a 1-million-dollar prize in the “UAE Drones for Good” competition for the best use of a civilian drone to improve people's lives.

In 2015, Przemysław received two awards. In November, he was featured in the second edition of New Europe 100 – that lists the greatest innovators in the areas of business, politics, culture, science and social activities. In June, Przemysław was selected as one of the winners in the Innovators Under 35 competition organized by the MIT Technology Review. 

Przemyław obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland in January 2020, with a thesis investigating foldable flying robots to transport small packages directly to human hands in urban areas. The first drone developed by Przemysław during his Ph.D., called PackDrone, received three awards during the 46th International Inventions Fair (Palexpo, Geneva, Switzerland in 2018), The Audience Award, the Special Award of the President of the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland, and the Award of the President of the Association of Portuguese Inventors. 

While working on his Ph.D., Przemysław created Dronistics, an EPFL spin-off that designs and develops safe drone delivery systems for last-centimeter person-to-person delivery in urban environments. Additionally during this time, Przemysław took part in several start-up training programs  to gain entrepreneurial knowledge and experience. He received several grants to advance his unique Dronistics drone delivery system and to test the drone in distinct pilot projects. 

He continued research in the field of delivery drones as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the same lab (2020-2021).

Przemysław Mariusz Kornatowski is today the founder of the Kornatowski Innovation (KI) company. He stands as an experienced inventor and businessman who has developed several inventive drone systems over the last ten years.

Publications

F. Schiano, P. M. Kornatowski, L. Cencetti and D. Floreano, "Reconfigurable Drone System for Transportation of Parcels With Variable Mass and Size," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 12150-12157, Oct. 2022, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2022.3208716.

P. M. Kornatowski, M. Feroskhan, W. J. Stewart and D. Floreano, "A Morphing Cargo Drone for Safe Flight in Proximity of Humans," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 4233-4240, July 2020, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2993757.

P. M. Kornatowski, M. Feroskhan, W. J. Stewart and D. Floreano, "Downside Up: Rethinking Parcel Position for Aerial Delivery," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 4297-4304, July 2020, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2993768.

P. M. Kornatowski, A. Bhaskaran, G. M. Heitz, S. Mintchev and D. Floreano, "Last-Centimeter Personal Drone Delivery: Field Deployment and User Interaction," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 3813-3820, Oct. 2018, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2018.2856282.

P. M. Kornatowski, S. Mintchev, and D. Floreano, “An origami-inspired cargo drone,” in IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2017, vol. 2017–September, pp. 6855–6862.

P. Bai, B. Guerreiro, R. Cunha, P. Kornatowski, D. Floreano, and C. Silvestre, “Wall-contact sliding control strategy for a 2D caged quadrotor,” in International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems, 2018.

J. E. Auerbach, A. Concordel, P. M. Kornatowski, and D. Floreano, “Inquiry-Based Learning with RoboGen: An Open-Source Software and Hardware Platform for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence,” IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 2018.

J. E. Auerbach, G. H. M. Heitz, P. M. Kornatowski and D. Floreano. "Rapid Evolution of Robot Gaits," GECCO '15, Madrid, Spain, July 11-15, 2015.

J. Auerbach, D. Aydin, A. Maesani, P. Kornatowski and T. Cieslewski et al. "RoboGen: Robot Generation through Artificial Evolution," Artificial Life 14: International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, New York, NY, USA, July 30-August 2, 2014.

A. Briod, P. M. Kornatowski, J.-C. Zufferey and D. Floreano. "A Collision Resilient Flying Robot, in Journal of Field Robotics, vol. 31, num. 4, p. 469-509, 2014.

A. Briod, P. M. Kornatowski, A. Klaptocz, A. Garnier and M. Pagnamenta et al. "Contact-based navigation for an autonomous flying robot," International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, November 3-7, 2013.

Patents

P. M. Kornatowski, S. Mintchev and D. Floreano. "Foldable aircraft with protective cage for transportation and transportability," PCT/IB2017/052034 – granted, US15/093,872 – granted.

A. Briod, P. M. Kornatowski, A. Klaptocz, J.-C. Zufferey and D. Floreano. "A vertical take-off and landing aerial vehicle," EP13171364.6, 2013 – granted.

P. M. Kornatowski, Mir Feroskhan, and D. Floreano. “A morphing drone having retractable propeller arms for safe flight in proximity of living beings”, US 63/185,371 - patent abandoned.

P. M. Kornatowski, and D. Floreano. “A parcel or packet delivery drone configured for placement of the parcel or packet above the rotors of the drone,” US 63/185,373 - patent abandoned.

Awards

In 2021, the paper: P. M. Kornatowski, M. Feroskhan, W. J. Stewart and D. Floreano, "A Morphing Cargo Drone for Safe Flight in Proximity of Humans," received Honorable Mention from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters for in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 4233-4240, July 2020. 

In December 2018, start-up Dronistics was among the 21st annual IMD Startup Competition winners.

In April 2018, the first drone developed by Przemysław during his Ph.D., called PackDrone, received three awards during the 46th International Inventions Fair (Palexpo, Geneva, Switzerland in 2018), The Audience Award, the Special Award of the President of the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland, and the Award of the President of the Association of Portuguese Inventors. 

In 2015, Przemysław received two awards. In November, he was featured in the second edition of New Europe 100, which lists the greatest innovators in business, politics, culture, science, and social activities.
In June, Przemysław was selected as one of the winners in the Innovators Under 35 competition organized by the MIT Technology Review for the GimBall drone commercialized by the start-up Flyability.