Gallery from IARC 2008

In July, the Pima College team attends the International Aerial Robotics Competition, held at Fort Benning, Georgia. The team places 5th out of 10 teams in attendance, and brings back $5K in prize money plus an award for most innovative design.

The competition was held at the McKenna MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) site. A few of the buildings at McKenna are shown at left, including the IARC symbol attached to the target building. At right is the workshop area, where we made last-minute preparations for the competition.

Of the two members of the PCC team at the competition, Huihong Kuang (at left) was our only student in attendance. Next to Huihong is our primary UAV with the avionics bay open.

A small video camera points out the left side of the airplane (shown above), just forward of the wing root. A few frames from the camera are shown below, as recorded on the ground station:

Our ground station is shown below. A steerable antenna is on the roof of our SUV. The antenna was able to dynamically track the UAV and receive video data from a 2.4 GHz transmitter on the UAV. GPS tracking data was received from a separate 900 MHz radio modem using an omnidirectional antenna. The GPS data was used to point the antenna.

The antenna controller is a BasicX BX-24 microcontroller made by NetMedia. The BX-24 controls two step motors that move the antenna in azimuth and elevation. The antenna was able to track the UAV during flight.

Our ground station software has been partially transitioned to Ada 95. This is the first year we've used Ada-based software during the competition. In this case the software handles incoming GPS data from the radio modem and reroutes the data to the antenna controller.

In between the two LCD displays (below) is our partially-completed Interior Search Vehicle (ISV). We were able to demonstrate the ISV's closed-loop altitude control to one of the judges. The ISV autopilot is based on a Texas Instruments MSP430 chip.

The ISV has been under development since late 2007, which gives us a head start on Mission 5 for next year's competition. Mission 5 will be entirely indoors. In addition, ever since the PCC team was first formed in late 2004, we've concentrated exclusively on electric power for all our vehicles, which dovetails very well with the electric propulsion requirements for the new mission.

At prior IARC competitions our UAV managed to escape major damage. We weren't so lucky this year. We had crashes or hard landings every day, including the practice day, but fortunately repairs got us back in the air after each incident. It helps a lot to have an airframe with a very simple structure that's easy to repair. The vehicle has historically tended to get through static judging with high scores for crashworthiness.

Other teams -- the massive trailer from Virginia Tech is a familiar sight from past competitions. The Georgia Tech helicopter (at right) is based on a relatively large Yamaha R50 helicopter. GT came in first place this year. For their Level 3 attempt, GT used a distinctive boom mechanism (not shown) that was lowered from their helicopter.

ABES Engineering College, from India, brought an airplane as their primary air vehicle (left), plus a quadrotor subvehicle.

University of Arizona (left) and University of Waterloo also brought airplanes as their primary vehicles.