Outback Challenge 2009
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“The 2009 UAV Challenge was announced in the December/January 2008 issue of Aviation Business Asia Pacific magazine. The 2009 event took place between September 28 and October 1. The combined challenge award funds were A$70,000.00. 34 Search and Rescue teams from 5 countries expressed an interest in entering with 12 finally qualifying for the event. In addition to the traditional Search and Rescue Challenge and Airborne Delivery Challenge, there was a new Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge open to high-school students. The two separate documentary challenges of the previous years were combined into a single Documentary Challenge.”
2009 UAV Challenge Organizers
– Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA) (a five-year-long partnership between CSIRO and Queensland University of Technology)
– The Queensland State Government
2009 Search and Rescue Challenge
“2009 was the first year that teams managed to enter the search area. Team Galah suffered an engine shutdown just inside the search area and made an emergency landing less than 100 m from Outback Joe (although they were not aware of this at the time). Team Melbourne UAV were en route to the search area when high wind conditions flipped their aircraft causing it to enter flight termination mode. The airframe was lost due to high impact with the ground.”
2009 Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge
2009 Airborne Delivery Challenge
2009 Documentary Challenge
2009 UAV Challenge Results
| Challenge | Grand prize | Winners | Encouragement awards |
| Search and Rescue Challenge | A$50,000.00 | (not completed) | Melbourne UAV (A$7,500), Team Galah (A$7,500) |
| Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge | A$10,000.00 | Look mAh! No Hands!, Brisbane Grammar School | – |
| Airborne Delivery Challenge | A$5,000.00 | Cloud 9, Aviation High | Wynnum North State High School (A$500) |
| Documentary challenge | A$5,000.00 | Melbourne UAV | N/A |
News articles relating to the 2009 UAV Outback Challenge
sUASnews.com:
2009-09-07 The Outback Challenge
Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
TopNews.us:
UND team ranked on top in the UAV competition
2009 the year of the great fire…
The Teams in the order they were announced having qualifyed, as much as I can find about each.
1. Melbourne UAV
“At least we were the first team to make it outside the airport in 3 years of competition! We got around 2.7Km’s out when our failsafe activated. We’ll be back next year! Game on”
2. Team Galah
3. Team Heads Up UAV
4. Open UAS
5. Team Rocky
6. Team Javelin
7. Team Jatayu
8. QUT SRUAV09
9. Cooee Rescue
10. Team Sasha
11. University of Adeladie
12. UQ AVRG
Airborne Delivery Challenge:
1. Wynnum North State High School
2. The Young Guns (Kingaroy State High School)
3. The Flying Nutters (Kingaroy State High School)
4. Stihl Flying (Kingaroy State High School)
5. Cloud 9 (Aviation High)
6. AV8 (Aviation High)
7. MUROC Mozzies
8. MUROC Dingoes
9. MUROC Brumbies
In the Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge: