UAV Challenge – Outback Search and Rescue Event 2011/2012 – Deliverables and Points System

In this year’s Search & Rescue Outback Challenge, teams will be judged on a variety of factors. The judging begins months before the actual event itself.

By the time the teams show up at Kingaroy Airport in October 2012 they will have to have passed two “go/no-go” qualifying/disqualifying decisions by the competition organisers and will have already been awarded a certain amount of points based on submitted information.

How this works is that the teams have to submit three sets of so-called Deliverables.  These are a combination of technical reports, a video and a flight record. At least three judges will be judging all aspects of the challenge and they are all professional staff from the UAV / UAS industry.

Deliverable 1 – Short Technical Report: no points are awarded as this is a go/no-go only report.

Teams are required to electronically submit a 6 page PDF report which describes their proposed system design as well as safety considerations for that design.  The focus of this report is on risk management and operational safety. If the organisers are not convinced that the team’s proposed design will comply with either the competition rules or safety aspects, the team will be disqualified and will not be participating further in this year’s challenge.

Deliverable 2 – Technical Report and video: a maximum of 15 points are awarded as well as this being a go/no-go decision from the judges.

The technical report must consist of everything from an Executive Summary to more in depth risk management discussion as well as detailed flight test reports amongst many other technical aspects of how the team plans to carry out the mission while complying with the competition rules and maintaining safety throughout the competition.  The organisers of the event place heavy emphasis on safety and risk management throughout all stages of the competition.

The flight video should be uploaded to a video sharing website on the internet and must show the actual aircraft the teams plan to use in the competition. Teams must clearly show their pre-flight checks and procedures, the aircraft taking off and landing as well as showing the aircraft dropping its water payload. Emphasis is placed on showing the aircraft’s stability after it has dropped the payload. Teams must take care to keep the aircraft’s centre of gravity in a stable flying state after the drop.

The flight video will also be reviewed by the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) as part of the safety compliance information for each team. CASA will also be checking the teams at the event to ensure that their aircraft are as described in Deliverable 2 as well as whether or not they are complying with the safety procedures as stated in each team’s Deliverable 2 documents.

Deliverable 3 – Flight record: again no points are awarded here but only a go/no-go decision is made by the judges.

The outline of Deliverable 3 for the Outback UAV Challenge is slightly complex in the rules document but it basically comes down to the following:

–          Teams must show documentary proof of 5 autonomous flight hours on the complete system to be used in the competition and at least 1 flight must be longer than 30 minutes. These 5 hours must not include flight time used to tune the autopilot.

The organisers have realized over the course of the previous events that in order to successfully complete missions the teams need to have sufficient autonomous experience before they show up for the event. Teams need to more fully understand how their own systems work before the event and that only comes through plenty of flying beforehand.

Even though only 5 documented hours of autonomous flight is required, the organisers do prefer that at least 10 hours should be flown on the systems as well as a few flights over 1 hour. It is expected that the teams show up to the event after having thoroughly tested their various fail safe systems as well as having flown in various wind conditions.

Team Interview: A maximum of 15 points is awarded

For this year’s competition the judges have decided to drop the oral presentation required to be submitted by the teams as in previous years in favour of a team interview to be held with the team in their tent next to their aircraft at Kingaroy Airport.

For the interview teams will be awarded points for the following:

–          Safety Approach

–          System Design

–          Learnings from the development process

–          Unique or innovative features

Mission performance

Now we come to the bulk of the points to be awarded, flying the mission during the event. Basically, the more automation is used, the more points a team will be awarded.  Teams need to find Outback Joe and drop an emergency package as close as possible to him without actually hitting him. Each team will have a total of 90 minutes to complete the entire mission. 15 minutes is allowed for setup and launch, 60 minutes of flight time including the landing and 15 minutes for recovery and pack up.

A maximum of 130 points may be awarded to a team based on the following:

As you can see from all this, there are many aspects that will either make or break a team before and during the Outback Challenge. The team that completes the mission successfully within the allocated time, wins the competition. If more than one team completes the mission successfully, the team with the highest points wins.

For anyone wanting to read through the complete competition rules and a full description of the scoring system, you can get that document through the following link:

http://www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au/UAVChallengeRulesSearchAndRescue2011v1_1.pdf