July 29, 1999
Vol . 15, No. 8
July 29, 1999 Vol . 15, No. 8
Two years into a three-year international aerial robotics competition,
the Simon Fraser University aerial robotics group is still flying
high after earning the second-highest number of cumulative points
this year behind a German team from Technische Universitaet Berlin.
"We're first in North America, though," says Pavel Haintz
(above), the indefatigable SFU grad student whose team came first
last year with a unique, robotic airship.
The purpose of the competition, held in Richmond, Washington,
is to demonstrate the difficult feat of autonomous flight while
mapping out a disaster area and searching for and identifying
'bodies'. Twelve universities competed, including the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Waterloo and
the University of British Columbia.
This year, the SFU team scrapped their airship concept and instead
built a remote controlled airplane for the competition, pairing
it with a souped up Yamaha all-terrain vehicle that could search
for bodies spotted from the air.
Haintz and his team, which has grown to 15 students from engineering
and three students from computer science, required a pickup truck
and two vans to transport their equipment, which included six
networked computers, video equipment, an ultrasound system, custom-designed
vision and command and control software and a global positioning
system.
"Only the Berlin team succeeded in autonomous flight,'' says
Haintz. "Our airplane had a bunch of problems, so we didn't
attempt autonomous flight. Now we have a full year of testing
ahead of us, to make sure our system is reliable for next year."
Next year is the final year of the competition, when autonomous
flight must be demonstrated in order to win. "The real competition
that matters is the year 2000 -- anything can still happen. We
could come in first or at the bottom, its still wide open,"
says Haintz."
© Simon Fraser University, Media and Public Relations