Teams Progress During the Fourth IARC Mission
as they go Head-to-Head in the World’s Premier Aerial Robotics Competition
(2008 Prize increases to $80,000)

The 17th annual AUVSI International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) was conducted from 23-27 July 2007 at Ft. Benning’s (Georgia) McKenna MOUT site, which is a special facility having a complete uninhabited village for use in urban warfare games. This particular venue is important to the current (fourth) IARC mission which involves interaction of the aerial robots with buildings (finding, identifying, entering, relaying of information from within). Teams from as far away as India joined others from Canada and the USA at Ft. Benning Georgia to compete in AUVSI's longest running and most challenging robotics event which is now entering its 18th year. Collegiate teams are building flying robots that are completely autonomous and must fly a 3km ingress path (Level 1) to find a city where a particular building will be identified along with its openings (Level 2). The aerial robots must then select an opening and either fly into the building or send in an autonomous sensor probe to search for a particular target and send pictures of the target back 3km to the starting point (Level 3). Level 4 puts all of these autonomous aerial robotics behaviors together to perform the entire mission seamlessly in under 15 minutes (see mission description in the Official Rules. This year several teams moved forward to advanced levels with the Georgia Institute of Technology actually achieving Level 3, while Virginia Tech and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology just barely missing completion of Level 3 before time ran out.
(movie source below courtesy of Bergen R/C Helicopters, Cassopolis MI 49031)

Final Stats for the 17th annual International Aerial Robotics Competition: Of the 15 teams represented this year (out of a field of 27 collegiate teams entered), The Georgia Institute of Technology completed Level 3 and received "Honorable Mention" for their Journal Paper The University of Arizona received "Honorable Mention" for their T-Shirt The University of Central Florida received "Honorable Mention" for their presentation and received the award for "most innovative air vehicle". The University of Waterloo received "Honorable Mention" for both their Journal Paper and "most innovative air vehicle". Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University walked away with awards for "best presentation", "best overall system", and "best T-shirt". In addition, Virginia Tech completed Level 2 and came very close to completing Level 3.

The Southern Polytechnic Institute and State University received "Honorable Mention" for "best overall system".

The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) received "Honorable Mention" for both their presentation and for "most innovative air vehicle", however more significantly, they received the award for "best Journal Paper" with a perfect score of 100%. This is the first team in the past 17 years of the International Aerial Robotics Competition to receive a perfect score in this category (see the highest-ever rated Journal Paper). To top things off, SDSMT also completed Level 2.

The ABES Engineering College from Ghaziabad India received "Honorable Mention" for their T-shirt.

In addition, three teams completed the new JAUS Challenge: University of Central Florida, Purdue University, and Virginia Tech. One other team made an attempt at this new adjunct to the IARC, but was unable to complete it.

The final Static Judging and Performance Judging scores for 2007 are available as an EXCEL file.

Sponsors for the 2007 IARC were AUVSI (Prize money, logistics, insurance), the JAUS Program Office (logistics), with contributions from the Columbus AUVSI Chapter (toward the Team Banquet), and NovAtel (on site GPS field engineering). The host for the 2007 event was the U.S. Army, Ft. Benning Soldier Battle Lab. The volunteering judges are UAV experts-- Aaron Kahn, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; Don Lacey, former Air Force and currently with Raytheon Corp.; Ken Thurman, former Air Force and currently President of Aware Concepts. The organizer of the event is Prof. Robert C. Michelson, a past President of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and originator of the IARC. He is Principal Research Engineer Emeritus at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and President of Millennial Vision, LLC.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS !!    2008 will see $80,000 in prize money awarded.

The wording of an official statement made at the conclusion of this year's event states,

"Because the IARC lease with Ft. Benning expires in 2008, the fourth mission will conclude in 2008 and all of the prize money will be awarded in 2008. If a team completes the mission according to the stated rules, $80,000 will be awarded to that team, however if no team completes the mission according to the stated rules at the 2008 event, the $80,000 prize will be distributed at the discretion of the Judges (as stated in Prize Awards Section of the Official Rules) based on the performance demonstrated in 2008. It would be advantageous for each team to demonstrate each level that they are capable of performing (Levels 1 through 4). Each level demonstrated will be rewarded. This does not constitute a change in the Official Rules. The 5th IARC mission will begin in 2009."

2008 will see the teams go head-to-head to complete the entire mission and win the $80,000 grand prize set aside by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. With the conclusion of the 2007 competition year, no new teams will be admitted to compete in the currrent mission, but instead may apply for the yet-to-be-announced 5th mission of the International Aerial Robotics Competion beginning in 2009.

ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES FOR 2008

Because 2008 will be the final year for the current IARC mission, the following administrative procedures will be available to allow teams to demonstrate the maximum possible performance:

1. Every team will have the option to start at Level 1, regardless of previous accomplishments. Upon successful completion of each level, the team must successfully progress through all subsequent levels. Each team will have 4 attempts for each level.  It will be monetarily advantageous for the teams to show continuous transition from one completed level to the next.
2. If a team progresses continuously from one successfully completed level to the next higher level and then fails to accomplish that higher level, one attempt for the higher level will be charged.

The team with the highest Static Judging score will receive an additional attempt at each level (note: since 2008 is the final year of the current mission and only existing official teams will be qualified to compete, Static Judging will be based solely on the Journal Paper submissions).

PICTURE CAPTIONS

1. Georgia Tech's autonomous sub vehicle delivery system entering the target building through an opening found by their autonomous Rmax helicopter (2006).
2. Georgia Tech's autonomous ground rover deploys from its sub vehicle aeroshell to begin searching the target building (2006).

Officially registered teams are:

ABES Engineering College

Army Institute of Technology, University of Pune

California State University, Northridge

Delhi College of Engineering, University of Delhi

DeVry Calgary

École de Technologie Supérieure

Georgia Institute of Technology

LeTourneau University

Mesa State College

North Carolina State University

Ohio State University

Pima Community College

Purdue University

Rose-Hulman Institute

Simon Fraser University

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Southern Polytechnic State University

University of Alabama in Huntsville

University of Arizona

University of Calgary

University of Central Florida

University of Iowa

University of New Mexico

University of Ottawa

University of Texas at Austin

University of Waterloo

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

See who's been watching us now. Also, here are some other places that have information about the International Aerial Robotics Competition:

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ,

Ohio State University ,

Purdue University ,

LeTourneau University ,

CSUN ,

WARG- University of Waterloo ,

Delhi College of Engineering ,

ABES Engineering College ,

University of Alabama in Huntsville ,

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology ,

University of Arizona ,

Pima Community College ,

Southern Polytechnic State University ,

Georgia Tech's "GTAR" ,

Simon Fraser University Firefly ,

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH - Zurich) ,

Carnegie Mellon University ,

1995/96 MIT / Boston University / Draper team ,

Technische Universitaet Berlin ,

Stanford Aerospace Robotics Laboratory ,

Other Robotic Competitions .

Here are some places that have information about aerial robotics in general:

UAV Center

Wikipedia: UAVs

Wikipedia: Entomopter

Wikipedia: IARC

1st US-Asian Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) Demonstration/competition

Directory of rockets, missiles, and UAVs .

Here are some places that have information about early developmental aerial robotics systems:

NRaD AROD ,

AMGSSS ,

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