UVS Canada Student UAV Competition Results
Oromocto, NB – May 11, 2009 – Student teams from 4 Universities across Canada competing in Phase II of the 2nd UVS Canada UAV Design/Build & Fly Competition hosted by CFB Gagetown were honored at an Awards Banquet on May 10.
The purpose of the competition is to promote and develop Canadian interest, expertise and experience in unmanned systems technologies at the university and college levels. The theme of this year’s competition is supporting Forest Fire Fighting. The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) must be able to provide critical and timely information to the on-scene fire commander on the size, location and direction of the fire as well as spotting dangers to the fire fighters from hot spot flare-ups.
The students impressed the judges with their innovative approaches and by working together to make the most of the competition experience.
Phase I of the competition was the submission of design papers by 8 teams. The judges awarded the winners of Phase I in early February. 1st Place was awarded to Team RAGNAROK from Niagara College, 2nd Place Team Smokejumpers from University of Toronto Institute Aerospace Studies and 3 rd Place was awarded to VAMUdeS Project of Universite de Sherbrooke.
The first Canadian student UAV competition, won by the Universite de Sherbrooke, was held in Goose Bay, Labrador in 2007. The challenge was to design an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to support civilian Search and Rescue (SAR) and ultimately fly a SAR mission with the aim of locating a downed aircraft and its survivors. We are sure that this year’s competition will be equally successful and will contribute to develop the future engineers that will continue to insure Canada’s leading role in unmanned systems.
UVS Canada has been in the fore front of this growing sector for the past 7 years successfully acting as a conduit for industry, government, military and academia to exchange ideas and collaborate. As an independent all-Canadian not-for-profit association including industry, academia, government and other interested persons in its membership, UVS Canada’s objectives are to identify the Canadian community to itself, to other Canadians and to the rest of the world. UVS Canada works hard to encourage Canadian students and young engineers to get involved in the field of unmanned systems.
As well as the Student UAV Competition, we hold a Student Papers Competition and in 2007 initiated the Mark Cuss Scholarship program.
