Institution news
The Institution is delighted to welcome new and returning teams from around the world to BMFA’s Buckminster site for the finals of the UAS Challenge.
The Fly-Off event, taking place annually in June, marks the grand finale of the preceding nine months during which dedicated student teams have poured their efforts into designing, constructing, and piloting a fully-autonomous Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) for humanitarian aid missions.
During the fly-off event, teams have the opportunity to showcase their design and engineering skills by delivering formal presentations of their UAS before a panel of senior engineers from across aerospace industry. Additionally, teams have the chance to demonstrate the capabilities of their UAS, further emphasising the technical achievements of their crafts during live events.
Each UAS must execute takeoff, flight, and landing procedures autonomously and without any operator intervention that replicate real-world scenarios, including image recognition, package aid drops, climb and glide events, and other endeavours.
Teams receive feedback and scoring on a number of criteria across both sides of the fly-off competition, after which the results of all the event criteria will be announced and a new overall winner will be crowned.
Following their recent successes, University of Surrey will look to resecure their title for a third year running against competition from teams from UK, Bangladesh, Netherlands, India, Greece and Spain.
The teams taking part in this year’s fly-off event are as follows:
- De Montfort University, DMU Merlin, UK
- Loughborough UAV, Loughborough UAV, UK
- University of Aveiro, Automec UAV, UK
- University of Twente, DroneTeam Twente, Netherlands
- University of Leicester, LUNA, UK
- University of Sheffield, Project Falcon, UK
- University of the West of England, UWE Aerosoc, UK
- Ahsanullah University of Science And Technology, Team Albatross, Bangladesh
- Heriot-Watt University, Team Aero-Watt, UK
- University of Huddersfield, Team Hawk, UK
- University of Surrey, Team Peryton Albatross, UK
- Manipal Institute of Technology, Project DronAid, India
- University of Surrey, Team Peryton Dodo, UK
- University of Manchester, Halcyon, UK
- Brunel University, BRUAS, UK
- Istanbul Technical University, ATA Team, Turkey
- University College London, Team Nova, UK
- Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), HORUS UPV, Spain
- University of Portsmouth, UP, UK
- Imperial College London, ICAV Project, UK
- King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, UAS2030, Saudi Arabia
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, UMIC, India
- University of Western Macedonia, ASPiRE UOWM, Greece
- Queens University Belfast, SLIM, UK
- University of Southampton, Soton-Air, UK
- University of Wolverhampton, UoW Aeronautics, UK
- Coventry University, Phoenix, UK
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is grateful for the support of its sponsors Ansys, Babcock International, QinetiQ, Maxon, PA Consulting and Leonardo, with support from ARPAS-UK, AirDropBox, BMFA, Mashoom and Talentview Aviation.
On behalf of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the UAS Challenge Steering Group and all our sponsors, we wish all teams taking part the best of luck and we look forward to seeing everybody’s hard work in person.