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The full list of competitors for the 2021 UAS Challenge is available on the Challenge website, with international teams hailing from Russia, Greece, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, The Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Denmark.
All teams will once more undertake the task of designing, manufacturing and operating a complete unmanned aircraft system, developing their practical skills and gaining valuable experience of working on a real-world project in the process.
After this year’s finals took place virtually owing to COVID-19, the 2021 event is expected to return to the normal Challenge schedule with a final fly-off event planned to take place next Summer. However, there are already plans in place to mitigate the effects of further restrictions in the future.
“Whilst 2020 has caused significant global disruption, the UAS Challenge Steering Committee have been working hard to maintain momentum with the IMechE UASC moving into the 2021 competition cycle,” remarked Alex Robbins, UAS Challenge Project Manager. “With the changes in UK Civil Aviation Authority regulations to expand the weight limits for UAS registration, the Steering Committee has adapted the 2021 Rules to provide a further technical challenge and drive innovation by increasing the maximum mass of entrant’s vehicles which could be utilised to build in further reliability to their designs or opt to carry extra payload weight to increase capability of their design.
“We hope that this, combined with the change of payload specification to the Air Dropbox Micro System as a standardized payload size for all teams and the streamlining of reports to be produced by teams will encourage entrants to develop novel and competitive solutions to the competition requirements, further developing their experience to take forward into their careers in Engineering,” he continued.
Alongside a large number of returning teams, familiar faces and previous award winners, we are delighted to welcome several new teams from Democritus University of Thrace (Greece), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Russia), Anambra State University (Nigeria), Heriot Watt University (UK) and De Montfort University (UK) to the UAS Challenge this year, making for the most diverse competition to date in terms of countries represented.
“The UAS Challenge captivated our attention due to its strong social action,” explained Konstantinos Christodoulou, Team Leader for Democritus University of Trace’s Team DART. “As young scientists we aim to change the world creating a competitive product which saves lives!”
The UAS Challenge Mentoring programme is also due to restart for the new year, where teams are able to work alongside and learn from experienced engineers in the Aerospace industry.
“GKN Aerospace is proud to continue being a Gold Sponsor of the IMechE UAS Challenge. The mentoring programme specifically is a great opportunity not only for the students to receive industrial support but also for the sponsors to engage the future leaders of their companies and start closing the skills gaps they face,” said Furqan, Strategic Technology & Collaboration Lead at GKN Aerospace.
All participants are encouraged to follow the UAS Challenge’s Twitter and Facebook social media channels and Challenge Website for updates on the competition and participants’ UAS. The Welcome Webinar and Q&A Session recordings are also available to review over the Winter break and we wish all teams the best successes with their UAS this year.