Aerial Robotics Club Takes 6th Place in Student UAV Competition
June 25 , 2006
By Matthew Hazard, NCSU

The NCSU Aerial Robotics Club (ARC) took 6 th place out of 18 competing teams in the Fourth Annual Student UAV Competition, hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The NCSU team's journal-quality paper and oral presentation both took first place, sweeping the preflight judging for the second year in a row! The competition was held June 14 to 18 in Maryland at the Webster Field Annex of Patuxent Naval Air Station, a UAV base for the U.S. Navy.

The competition tasks student teams to construct an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) capable of autonomous flight along a set of predetermined GPS waypoints. Additionally, the aircraft must perform a simulated reconnaissance mission over a designated search area, retrieving visual imagery of ground targets. The teams have forty minutes to fly the waypoints, search the target area, process all the collected data, and give a report to the judging staff. Additional points can be garnered for spotting targets beyond the search area, successful redirection of the aircraft to a surprise waypoint, and autonomous takeoff and landing (NCSU did not attempt either feat).

2006 NCSU Aerial Robotics Club

This year, ARC constructed an airplane with a massive payload capacity and capable of slow, steady flight. Nicknamed ‘Big Red' by some of our members, the 12.5 foot wingspan aircraft can carry 20 pounds of payload. The team fulfilled the autonomy requirements with the installation of the Micropilot, a miniature autopilot designed for small UAVs. The imagery system, easily the most ambitious of all 18 teams competing this year, consisted of an onboard computer and a Nikon D50 dSLR (a 6-megapixel digital still camera) hung in a gimbaled mount. The computer was programmed to download images from the camera during flight, tag them with precise location and orientation information from onboard sensors, and transmit them to the ground over a high power 802.11g wireless link. Once on the ground, the images would be automatically merged into a single mosaic of all collected images, permitting operators to quickly identify and locate ground targets.

During competition, the system performed as designed until a battery failure early in the flight reset the onboard computer and autopilot. Despite this incident, the team was able to locate 4 out of 6 targets: GONA out of GO NAVY. The club plans to focus this year's efforts on ensuring reliability throughout the system, increasing efficiency in the timed portion of the event, and adding autonomous takeoff and landing capabilities.

Comprised mostly of undergraduates in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, ARC is a student-led organization that is always looking for new members. This year's competition team consisted of: Jon Brandmeyer (ME), Dan Edwards (AE), Matt Hazard (AE), Tim Josey (AE), Adam Propst (AE), Michael Rhodes (AE), CJ Soques (ECE), Alan Stewart (AE), Matthew Strautmann (ME), Cheng Tsai (EE) and Marcus Wagnborg (EE). Ron Burnette (AE) and David Burke (EE) also attended as spectators.

For information about becoming a member of the Aerial Robotics Club or how you can sponsor this exciting student organization, check out http://www.ncsu.edu/studorgs/ar* or contact aerialrobotics@ncsu.edu.