Institution news
Following successful online and hybrid events owing to COVID restrictions, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers is delighted to welcome the return of all UK and International teams to the BMFA Buckminster site.
Held every July, the Fly-Off event is the culmination of the last nine months of hard work from the student teams participating, who are tasked with designing, building and flying a fully-autonomous Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to undertake humanitarian aid missions.
The fly-off event combines two days of formal presentations and justifications of a team’s design and engineering abilities in front of a judging panel of senior engineers from across the aerospace industry with the opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of their UAS. Each team’s craft must take off, fly and land without operator input and complete a number of mandatory and optional challenges designed to mimic real-world scenarios, involving image recognition, package aid drops, climb and glide events and more.
Teams will receive feedback and scoring on a number of criteria across both sides of the fly-off competition, after which the results of all the event criteria will be announced and a new overall winner will be crowned.
Eager to repeat their success from 2021, University of Surrey will see two separate teams attempt to retain the title for their university, but will face still competition from many new and returning teams from UK, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, India, Belgium and many more countries besides.
The teams taking part in this year’s fly-off event are as follows:
- University of Wolverhampton, University of Wolverhampton Aeronautics (UWA) , UK
- Universidade de AveiroAutomec, Portugal
- University of Huddersfield, Team Hawk, UK
- Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), HORUS UPV, Spain
- Loughborough University, Loughborough UAV, UK
- University of Twente, DroneTeam Twente, Netherlands
- University of Portsmouth, UP, UK
- University of the West of England, Game of Drones, UK
- University of Surrey, Team Peryton Heron, UK
- Heriot-Watt University, Aero-Watt, UK
- University of Surrey, Team Peryton Atlantis, UK
- Technische Universität Dresden TURAGGermany
- Istanbul Technical University, ATA Team, Turkey
- University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Team Wrise, India
- Brunel University London, Brunel, UK
- University of Sussex, Sussex UAV Team , UK
- De Montfort University, DMU Flyers, UK
- Queens University Belfast, QUB, UK
- Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of engineering sciences and technology, Team Foxtrot, Pakistan
- University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen Gull Revengers, UK
- University of Manchester, Heimdall, UK
- Istanbul Technical University, ITU Albatros Takımı, Turkey
- University of Dundee, Haggis Aerospace, UK
- Glyndwr University, Wrexham Wasps, UK
- Imperial College London, ICAV Project, UK
- University of Moratuwa Mora Avions, Sri Lanka
- University College London, Team Nova, UK
- Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Team Eagles, Nigeria
- Katholieke Universitiet Leuven, ROK, Belgium
- Queen Mary University of London, Team Falcon, UK
- Coventry University, Team Phoenix, UK
- Sheffield Hallam University, Hallam Air, UK
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is grateful for the support of its sponsors, including QinetiQ, Babcock International, RS Grass Roots and Autodesk, with support from ARPAS-UK, AirDropBox, Mashoom and Talentview Aviation.
On behalf of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the UAS Challenge Steering Group and all our sponsors, we wish all teams taking part the best of luck and we look forward to seeing everybody’s hard work in person.