4 May 2012

Canberra UAV takes to the skies

| johnboy
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DIY Drones has given us the tip about video of the Canberra UAV project (featuring local IT legend Andrew Tridgell).

The CanberraUAV team is designing, building and flying Uninhabited Airborne Vehicles (U.A.V.) to compete in the 2012 UAV Outback Challenge, specifically the Search and Rescure Challenge.

The Challenge

The UAV Outback Challenge is based upon the premise of rescuing a stranded tourist in the Australian outback. In the Search and Rescue Challenge portion, the UAV plane must search an 2km x 2km area for the tourist. Once he has been found, the plane will drop a life saving 500ml of water as close to him as possible. Points are awarded based upon the number of functions (takeoff, landing, person detection) that are performed autonomously by the UAV and how close the dropped bottle of water is to the tourist.

This needs to happen in a 60 minute time limit from takeoff to landing!

The challenge is quite complex with many technical, logic and regulatory requirements that need to be fulfilled.

The Team

The CanberraUAV team is comprised of community technology group members, university students and educators from colleges and universities. the team represents the cross section of technology expertise in Canberra, including teachers, communications engineers, pilots and software developers. All members of the team are volunteers and we operate on a not-for-profit basis.

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Sounds like a fun project, I hope they keep the video updates coming.

BTW, the OP states the search area is 2km x 2km. The linked page says the edge length is 2 nautical miles, not 2 kilometres, so the search area is actually closer to 3.7 x 3.7km.

Deref said :

Now these are the people who should be held up to kids as heroes instead of those sporting boofheads.

Brilliant! 🙂

+1 on that.

This site http://www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au/ describes the competition. see Read More

Now these are the people who should be held up to kids as heroes instead of those sporting boofheads.

Brilliant! 🙂

sarahsarah said :

I always thought UAVs were Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (as far as CASA defines them) not Uninhabited Airborne Vehicles?

Reminds me of a few years ago when they were trying to get everybody to call UFOs UASs (Unexplained Aerial Sightings). Also when they tried to change the name of RSI to OOS (Occupational Overuse Syndrome).

Very cool.

But I still prefer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new one.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

*enemy UAV, take it down!*

Does the competition rules prohibit eliminating the competition?

p1 said :

I have never heard the “U” in UAV defined as uninhabited before.

It avoids the sexist term “man”

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd12:43 pm 04 May 12

*enemy UAV, take it down!*

Reminds me a little of an invention I saw on one of those Discovery channel shows where they make cool s***. It was a computer-controlled cannon, setup on a beach, that could detect a swimmer in distress and then fire a out to them that contained a life-jacket. They never did really get it working properly, but it was a pretty cool idea nevertheless.

Ben_Dover said :

Big Boys Toys!

Revenue line.
Reducing a risk of large equipment and personnel loss to a risk of replaceable equipment loss is of significant value to industry.

Also, how does someone render a plane habitable instead of merely occupiable?

Big Boys Toys!

I always thought UAVs were Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (as far as CASA defines them) not Uninhabited Airborne Vehicles?

Still, this is pretty cool – good luck with your challenge folks 🙂

Awesome.

Although some proof reading of the release wouldn’t have gone astray. Also, I have never heard the “U” in UAV defined as uninhabited before.

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