6 Jul 2015
Aeronautical Engineering MEng students win two awards in the iMechE’s first UAS Challenge competition
Ten, final year Aeronautical Engineering MEng students, won the Design and Most Viable Business Proposition Awards at the iMechE’s first UAS Challenge competition.
Held on 1-2 July at Bruntingthorpe airfield, the challenge asks teams of undergraduates to design and build an unmanned aircraft system to fly a representative humanitarian mission. They had to identify a drop zone on the ground using an on-board camera, and parachute a 1kg aid package - all of which must be done automatically with no manual control.
Loughborough’s team of students competed against 14 other universities from around the UK. They were the only team to successfully fly the complete mission at the event.
Dr Christopher Harvey, Lecturer in Structural Mechanics, said: “The team’s technical abilities, practical skills, team work and professionalism were impressive to everyone. They were a credit to themselves and to the University.”
Team members: Mark Baxter, Ben Burslem, Ben Chase, Jonathan Cooper, Fidel Fernandez, Charles Hyndman, Manoj Patel, Luke Rank, Ben Robinson, Ben Thorpe
The video of the Loughborough team’s automatic flight is available to watch here.