Aiming for the sky

Bangalore: Team Jatayu — students from RV College of Engineering — stood with pride as they accepted the runners-up position at The Australian Outback Challenge -— Search and Rescue Mission 2009, held from September 29 to October 1.
“Our goal was to put India on the growing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) forum and make her proud,” said Vinay, team representative. And this was the perfect opportunity for team Jatayu which comprised Vikas R Wadhvani, Udayan U, Vinay R, Shivaprasad M and Priyadarshi Harsha; that took part in the biggest robotics challenge in the world and also the first in building an autonomous fixed UAV without a remote control.
The UAV Ouback Challenge began in 2007 to promote UAVs. This event is a co-operative effort between the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (a partnership between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Queensland University of Technology), the Queensland Government and Boeing Australia Limited.
The competition required the participants to build an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle capable of searching an area of 2X3 nautical miles after travelling through a narrow nautical mile corridor. The target for this search was a dummy of a human being wearing a Hakubra hat consisting of a particular heat signature. Upon detection of the target, the UAV had to drop a life saving 500ml packet of water and return to the aero dome. This task was to be performed autonomously, which required the teams’ to install intelligence on the UAV and the ground station, for the flight to be completed without human intervention.
22/10/09 ExpressBuzz

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Oct 2009, New Oct 2009