The Seafarer Chapter of AUVSI held the Student UAS Competition 18-22 June, with North Carolina State University vaulting to the top of the list after taking second place last year.
This year’s concept revolved around carrying out tasks with a scenario where the U.S. Forest Service requests intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance through a UAS to perform a search-and-rescue mission after a huge forest fire in Idaho has spread to 100,000 acres. Challenges included detecting infrared (heat) signatures, a communications relay challenge and an egg drop, where they try to drop a plastic egg near a target.
RJ Gritter was the team lead for NCSU. The school has participated in the competition for 12 years and “made a lot of little improvements,” to last year’s UAS they built from scratch.
“We enjoy coming here every year because it’s a great opportunity to learn from other teams and experience all the challenges we have to get through as a team,” he says.
Cornell University, last year’s top team, ranked second in this year’s competition. The team based their UAS on the design that brought it victory last year.
Cornell’s team captain, Joel Heck, a graduating senior, said he’s been on the team for four years and his team is “glad judges added more tasks this year.”
“It’s great to let the younger members on the team experience the process and see people the years’ past,” says Heck.
SUAS initially had 48 teams signed up, out of which 28 teams actually flew their UAS at the competition.
Some teams like the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, had no prior experience in student competitions and it was the students’ first year participating.
Moshe Damkani, the team captain of Israel Institute of Technology, said because they were an international team, they had to ship everything out a month earlier.
“We’re proud of ourselves for all the work we put in and especially excited to see all the other teams and getting ideas from those who have been here for so many years since it is our first year,” says Damkani.
The top five teams, who completed the missions successfully in the overall categories were: North Carolina State University, Cornell University, Delhi Technological University (India), Kansas State University, and Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. There was a total of $51,750 prize money awarded to the 33 schools that competed.
Shivam Gautam, captain of Delhi Technological University’s team says, “after working for so long and so hard on the UAS, the best part is to meet the other teams and gives us hands on experience and exposure to the different engineering fields.”
Photo: AUVSI
Source: AUVSI Web Site