Outback Joe
Well Joe has another year to sit back and relax the event will now take place in 2012. Read more
The UAV Challenge – Outback Rescue, often referred to as simply the UAV Outback Challenge, began in 2007 and has been held every year since. The event is aimed at promoting the civilian use of unmanned aerial vehicles and the development of low-cost systems that could be used for search and rescue missions.The event is a cooperative effort between the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (a partnership between CSIRO and Queensland University of Technology) and the Queensland State Government. From 2007 to 2009 the event was also co-organised with Boeing Defence Australia. There is a thorough scoring system with a clear emphasis on safety, capability and technical excellence.
The event is one of the largest robotics challenges in the world and one of the highest stakes UAV challenges, with $50,000 on offer to the winner of the Search and Rescue segment of the Challenge. The Challenge takes place in Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia at the airport.
53 teams have made it through the D1 process for 2012, I will try and find bits about them here.
Here you can find a summary of the deliverables and points system for the 2011/2012 event.
Previous Challenges
We are pretty optimistic for another event to be run in September of 2011. As we find news of teams we shall add here……..
edit (March 2011) no news yet of an event for this year, that’s beginning to be fishy!
Well the first team that we know will be trying, they turned up in 2010 but had issues and decided to save their equipment for 2011
Melbourne UAV
Joe, Ian and Scott
The first team to declare an interest on the RCG forum, from India
Team Jatayu
Rescue Robotics are in, with a new workshop, 12th March 2011
http://www.rescuerobotics.com.au
This is a “UAV”? Looks more like “First flight of my 40 powered trainer”. No cameras, data acquisition modules etc? flown in company with crows and red kites, but thats par for the course in India. Well, maybe it will lead to better things. Harsh comment? It’s a real world out there, UAVs are not toy aeroplanes, they are flying data gatherers and real time observers.