Team Sky High win the 2018 Queensland Government Airborne Delivery Challenge
Day 3 of UAV Challenge Week saw the completion of the Queensland Government Airborne Delivery Challenge. The event was partially delayed yesterday due to bad weather but today was a beautiful day, from start to finish. The last six teams down the running order took to the field at 7.30am in ideal conditions. In the end, it was quite a close contest.
The winner (and also best Rookie Team) was Sky High from William J. “Pete” Knight High School in Palmdale California. The secret of their success was three great drops. Their accuracy was fantastic and they achieved drops of 3.62m, 0.18m and 1.04m. One of those drops was gentle enough not to exceed the impact limit and that was enough to put them first place.
Second place went to Blue Birds, also from William J. “Pete” Knight High School. They also did three accurate drops, though all of them impacted above the 75G “survival” limit.
In third place was PH Falcons from Palmdale High School in California. Their best drop was 0.4m.
The Insitu Pacific Airmanship Award was given to the Millennium Falcons for their professionalism and great team attitude.
The organisers were impressed by the teams that did not score so well but used automatic dropping systems. It is great to see high-school teams implementing these systems and we are sure that these will improve in the future.
Team photos will be posted in the coming weeks. The organisers would like to thank the teams for the great spirit in which they competed and the event sponsors for their continued support.
This year our Gold Sponsors were the Queensland Government, Boeing, Insitu Pacific, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Defence Science and Technology Group, and our Bronze Sponsor was The Mathworks. The event was co-organised by Queensland University of Technology (The Australian Centre for Robotic Vision) and CSIRO’s Data61.
We could not run these events without this generous support and also the volunteer support of many others who commit many hours of their time to the UAV Challenge.
