I have started a new group for discussion and sharing of information concerning the Outback Challenge, I feel it is important to share as much as possible here in a centralized location in order to help everyone. I have started a discussion concerning Deliverable 1 my hope is to get as many as possible posted for future people to see what they look like and to see the wide array of ideas that are presented, and just to share with others to get feedback.
Comments
I think it's a good idea to have a group for this. Good one Mark!
I think that some teams might wish to remain a little bit competitive for the challenge and might prefer to delay the public release of their deliverables until they are too late to be adopted by other's into this challenge round. I'm all for sharing new ideas but sometimes the timing has to be right! ;-)
In particular for this "challenge" I think that the airframe choice, design and execution will determine the winner of this event. Accordingly I'd be interested to see what teams have chosen as their airframes and how many helicopters we'll be getting this year! PerthUAV will be using a electric VTOL design this time around in order to have a strong safety case to get through D2 and 3 (and hopefully into the top 20 to go), simply because a VTOL can get away with tiny props with little kinetic energy which makes it safer to operate around Joe BLOS and without reliable comms. Plus being electric makes it easier to comply with the rotor/propulsion stop rules etc.
I'm guessing that of the 58 or so that made it through D1 maybe half will be using heli's, then VTOLs, STOLs and probably a few fuel powered multi's! Will be interesting for sure! Sadly only 20 will make it through the documentation and log stages, so I hope everyone keeps their pencils sharp. :-p
Thanks Mark! We'll probably release the CanberraUAV D1 soon (I'll need to check with the other team members first, but we did release all our deliverables from past years)