The challenge

Participants

The high-school airborne delivery challenge and robot airborne delivery challenge are open to all Australian high-school students.

The open search and rescue challenge is open to university students from any institution (Australian or international) or aerospace enthusiasts (perhaps someone who is just keen on RC aeroplanes and technology). Please read the rules carefully relating to undergraduate, post-graduate and aerospace enthusiasts and note the restrictions regarding corporate involvement).

Team work is a very important component of working in the Aerospace industry, and the difficulty level of the UAV challenge has been designed to promote this. Organisers strongly encourage participants to enter in teams.

Task

The UAV Challenge focuses of the civil, search and rescue application of UAV technology.

Entrants in the competition will embark on an Outback rescue mission, which involves finding and assisting 'Outback Joe', a lost bush walker in Australia's vast outback using UAVs. You will need to design and build a machine to do this.

The Challenge is split into three categories of varying difficulty:

• Airborne Delivery Challenge (high school) - develop and fly a remotely controlled airborne delivery system that can drop an emergency package to a lost bushwalker - 'Outback Joe'
• Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge (high school) – similar to the airborne delivery challenge but requires autonomous mode to be used and for the UAV to fly through designated circuit without intervention
• Search and Rescue Challenge(open)- develop and deploy a UAV to find 'Outback Joe' within a set of given coordinates and deliver emergency supplies within one hour.

In addition, entrants are encouraged to compete for the documentary prize. This involves producing a documentary about the team's preparation efforts.

The challenge may sound a bit difficult and it's not supposed to be a piece of cake, but we have specifically designed the rules of the competition so that it is something that high-school students and university students/amateurs can do. In addition, we have a team of UAV experts to answer your questions.

Prizes

There are four prizes to be won, and the winning team will have collected the most points in each category. The grading system will be different for each category, but will generally be based on the quality of Technical Reports, Oral Presentations and the completion of the actual flight mission. Grading will be performed by professionals in the UAV aerospace industry. Full details of the requirements will be available in the rules for each category.

Prizes will be awarded to the winning teams of each category as follows:

• AU$50,000 - winner Search and Rescue Challenge (open)
• AU$10,000 - winner Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge (high school)
• AU$5,000 – winner Airborne Delivery Challenge (high school)
• AU$5,000 – winner Documentary Challenge (open and high school)

Goals

The overall goal of this competition is to provide valuable experience to students and aerospace enthusiasts in designing, building, testing and operating UAVs. It will also unite these groups with the professional UAV industry (they will be your judges!).

UAVs will play a major part in beating the "tyranny of distance" for Australia. The competition will help create the future workforce that will see this become a reality!

We want you to learn about an exciting component of the aerospace industry, learn about teamwork and maybe set up your future career. Most importantly you'll have a lot of fun competing with your peers.