July 25, 2014
For the first time in six years of competition, the UT Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) team autonomously landed its aircraft, Kratos, at the 2014 Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Student Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Competition. Held near Lexington Park, Maryland at Webster Field, the internationally renowned competition challenges students to design, fabricate and demonstrate an aircraft that can complete autonomous and specific aerial operations.
UT placed 13th out of 33 teams overall and took home $1,400 in prize winnings. About twenty Cockrell School engineering students from various disciplines, including aerospace, electrical and mechanical, helped build the integrated aircraft throughout the spring and summer semesters using a fuselage from the Senior Design II class as a baseline. Dr. Armand Chaput of the ASE/EM department serves as the team’s faculty advisor.
Five aerospace students and ASE/EM staff member Mark Maughmer II traveled to participate in the competition. Team members who attended included first-year ASE student James Bell who served as mission director, Khanh Hoang and Cameron Hamer, mission planner pilots and Philip Arista and Charles Zappala, image recognition operators. The students were excited to see their hard work come to fruition as they participated in the UAS competition for the first time.
“This year's team should be very proud of their accomplishments,” said Chaput. “Because of the complexity of the competition and the on-board systems involved, previous teams have been led and staffed primarily by fourth year students with prior hands-on project experience. This year's team, however, was led by a first-year ASE student with only one senior on the entire team. Nonetheless, they competed successfully and achieved goals that eluded previous teams. We are pleased with how they performed and look forward to next year's competition.”
The Mission: Fire and Rescue
The competition consists of primary and secondary objectives, and if a team does not successfully land, most secondary objective points earned during flight are deducted. Primary objectives include autonomous takeoff and landing, and students are given the coordinates to program in their systems the night before for autopilot. Secondary objectives are optional, and teams are given a list of tasks to accomplish such as connecting to a router and downloading a file or sending GPS coordinates real time through a computer.
The proposed mission for this year’s competition was to assist firefighters in a 10-day forest fire in Idaho by providing intelligence such as surveillance or air-dropping assistance to the U.S. Forest Service. Examples of tasks include real-time images and location of the fire, tracking firefighters' locations, and delivering water.
“I would say that this mission was pretty successful,” Bell said. “We flew and landed Kratos autonomously and did not crash.”
While the team had a successful autonomous landing, other problems arose during the flight. Zappala said that the image capture capabilities on Kratos stopped working due to integration issues from shipping or interference problems.
“We were still able to gain a lot of points by using a live video feed and were able to identify targets,” Zappala said. Two years ago, the team experienced interference problems and crashed their UAV, Phoenix II, but still managed to place well due to other components of the competition.
Since the competition is held on a military base, interference, such as local radio signals, can become a problem. “You’re not really [competing] against anybody, you’re kind of against the competition,” safety pilot Maughmer said. Many teams experience these types of difficulties that do not occur during testing and groups often end up helping each other because they are all experiencing the same problems. The UT team even lent some batteries to another competitor said Maughmer.
Real-World Engineering Experience
At the competition, UAV companies, including the military, come out to scout the various teams. Students bring resumes and contact information and are afforded the opportunity to meet potential employers by attending the competition.
“One of the benefits to come out for me was to meet with company representatives at the event. I got my name out there a lot,” said Zappala, a 2014 UT aerospace engineering graduate.
“UAV companies are having the exact same problems as the teams at the competition such as integration problems and interference,” said Maughmer. “These kids are getting to use some of the stuff they learned in class and apply them real life issues before getting out into the field.”
The UT UAV team is open to any UT students interested in joining and team members have the ability to select their project focus. Students work about ten hours a week during the semester within various areas such as integration, data and autopilot.
Team members who worked on the aircraft this year were all new to the competition. “This year has been a learning year for everyone, and hopefully next year we can have the team leads work more autonomously,” Bell said.
