The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Program Executive Office for Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation, hosted the 3rd annual student competition for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) on Saturday, July 2, at the Patuxent River, Webster Field Annex, St. Inigoes.

The event has steadily grown over the years, this time hosting 13 colleges and universities from around the world. They were:

California State Polytechnic University
Cornell University
Istanbul Technical University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mississippi State University
North Carolina State University
Parks College, St. Louis University
Polytechnic University of NY
University of Kentucky
University of Manitoba, Canada
University of Texas at Arlington
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

According to Joe Brannan, competition director, “the purpose of the competition is to challenge a new generation of engineers to design and build autonomous unmanned air vehicles capable of performing realistic missions in a simulated environment, and to foster ties between young engineers and the organizations developing UAV technologies.”

Participating teams received an orientation brief upon arrival on Thursday evening. Friday was filled with base tours for the students, as well as making the required oral presentations with static displays to a panel of judges. Teams were also judged on technical papers submitted two weeks before the competition. Saturday saw the actual flight competitions, and an awards banquet was held that evening. “Each year, the level of competition gets stronger and more intense and I am very impressed with the effort that these students put into their projects,” said Mark Pilling, competition technical director.

The mission objective for the flying portion of the competition were for an unmanned, radio controllable aircraft to be launched and transition or continue to autonomous flight, navigate a specified course, use onboard payload sensors to locate and assess a series of man-made targets prior to returning to the launch point for landing. Each team was required to complete the task within 40 minutes.

Industry sponsors and the Navy have been strong supporters in making this event successful. This competition allows both industry and government to talk to the next generation of unmanned systems designers and developers in an informal environment. It also allows the students, most of whom either graduated or are entering their senior year, to talk with industry and government personnel about career options in the unmanned systems industry.

Prizes were awarded for various efforts to include the technical paper, oral brief, mission performance, and safety. The overall winners were:

1st University of Texas at Arlington
2nd Virginia Commonwealth
3rd North Carolina State
4th Virginia Polytechnic
5th University of Manitoba
6th University of Kentucky

The association awarded $18,750 total in prize money, with $6,500 going to the overall winner – University of Texas at Arlington.