"No team completed the mission with total success; however, the team from the University of North Dakota came within range of the mannequin, but the UAV failed when it dropped its water bottle payload too early.
The North Dakota team was awarded a $15,000 "encouragement prize" for its efforts in locating the downed mannequin.
Another US team made it into the vicinity of the mannequin, thwarted only by a technical fault that saw the UAV abort its mission and return to base."
From another news report, Team Robota, the winner of the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition, came very close, too:
"The Robota team, also from the US, made it into the area in which Joe was located before a communications failure saw their UAV abort its mission - they won $5000."
The first video from Joes position is now out
Comments
Andrew
If a PTZ camera is used, it is usually steered manually from the groundstation.
Cheers,
Andrew.
This is why I am not ruing this out. But the setup of radio links by the users is a mystery to me.
What were the orders of magnitude of powers? Any video of working groundstations (that should be available at least for the commission, according to contest rules)?
If you look at the distances to fly, this can't be done manually with the standard RC transmitter. The only links working here are Groundstation and Video. Starting would be manually by RC, flying to the search area trough the corridor is automatic. Also the the flight in the search area is automatic. If you find Joe by video you set several new waypoints to get a close flight path to Joe and drop then manually the bootle.
Because there is one point in the rules I don't understand: the flight must be fully automatic after takeoff.
But how automatic is automatic?
After finding a target, you must alter the flight plan OR fly in stabilised assisted mode.
How was this solved by the participating teams?
Cheers,
Andrew.
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