The 12th annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Seafarer Chapter student competition was held once again at Webster Field Friday and Saturday, June 20th and 21st.
The annual competition is “aimed at stimulating and fostering interest in unmanned air systems, technologies and careers, is focused on engaging students in a challenging mission.” To that end, the students must design, integrate an onboard payload then demonstrate their UAS system can fly, navigate a specified course and that they can operate the onboard payload sensors – in this instance, cameras.
Moreover, the students must turn in technical papers and make oral presentations.
This year, the competition had 33 entries. In addition to colleges from around the United States, there were teams from Canada, India, Israel and Romania. Among those were two high school teams – Great Mills High School and Gilman High School from Baltimore.
The Friday competition went well with those teams requesting a time-out flying Saturday.
One of teams from India flew after Great Mills and experienced a catastrophic in-flight failure. The aircraft was making a minor course correction when the wings and tail separated from the fuselage.
The judges and volunteers conducted a Foreign Object Walk Down (FOD) to recover aircraft parts, etc…
The Hornet team of Senior Sharlene Chiu and her sister, Junior Belinda Chiu, and Seniors Harrison Hope, Kevin DiCola and Eric Dalgetty experienced a minor technical problem with their airplane Friday but got it fixed and flew Saturday morning.
One of the judges commented that the Hornet displayed “good team work, manual control of their airplane and image capture of the targets.”
Last year, the Hornet Team was awarded $400 and this year they walked away with $700 for their efforts.
