Our Mission

The Challenge:

Your company is going after a contract, released by a city in the United States of America, seeking designs for an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) to be used for surveying in urban environments. The city is requesting bids for a pilot program to test the feasibility of safe UAS operation within the city to perform the surveying tasks. For this challenge, you will assume that the city has received the necessary waivers from the FAA to operate UAS in the city. In order to obtain the waivers, any UAS design must meet a set of safety requirements (outlined below) to operate within the city. In addition to the requirements, the contract is requesting for the system to perform certain survey tasks effectively. Winning the contract will be based on the most competitive bid (most reasonably priced for the performance).

Differences in Challenge:

Last year, the drone was required to be a crop duster for farmers, which was a very specific task. This meant that their challenges more had to do with the actual farming aspect of the job, making flying concerns more to do with precision and ability to do the specific task, and little else. This year, the job itself is much more simple. The drone simply has to take pictures of plants around a city. However, the biggest challenges we will face in doing that are avoiding obstacles, since we aren’t going to be in an open field, but a building-filled urban metropolis. Additionally, an emergency could be hazardous to people on the ground, which is not a concern on farmland, so knowing what to do in that scenario is extremely important, as risk of injured citizens could jeopardize the entire project. We will also need to define a definitive “runway” for the drone to land, which is different from last year as landing was not a big concern. This requires an additional skill set for pilots and/or automated systems, as they will effectively need to follow a set route and glide slope in order for the landing to proceed safely. The aircraft also needs too be able to operate beyond line of sight, which would not have been a concern last year as they were operating on open farmland. This means that any automated systems have to be very reliable as the drone cannot be seen, and there realistically also has to be an onboard camera and visual receiver so a manual operator can see and fly the drone remotely. GPS navigation is also unreliable in cities, so other methods of navigation will have to be available, which wasn’t a problem last year as they were in a open field. Last year, the design challenge required participants to compare their design to two other designs. The drone built by the team had to either survey or crop dust better than one of them. This year, there is nothing like that. Our equivalent challenge is simply meeting the city’s safety standards to become eligible for a waiver.