UAV Outback Challenge

The CanberraUAV team is designing, building and flying unmanned aerial vehicle (U.A.V.)  to compete in the 2012 UAV Outback Challenge, specifically the Search and Rescue Challenge.

Cyberhawk taking off

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.

The Canberra UAV team working on the Cyberhawk

Image taken from the Chameleon camera on the Cyberhawk