College of Engineering

Update: Utah State's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle team, OSAM-UAV was awarded $14,000 for their win and featured in the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) publication, Unmanned Systems - August 2009 edition. read more

The College of Engineering's Open Source Autonomous Miniature Unmanned Aerial Vehicle team or OSAM-UAV, won the 7th annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Student Unmanned Aerial Systems competition.  The OSAM-UAV team won the competition with the highest score in the competition's history.

Team members Yiding Han, Long Di, Chris Hall, Daniel Morgan, Cal Coopmans, Haiyang Chao, Aaron Avery, Jeff Anderson, and Kaylon Anderson placed first in journal paper, flight performance, and overall with a flawless flight.  They were awarded $14,000 in prize money, and an invitation to visit the Patuxent River Naval Base, Maryland, to see the Global Hawk UAV.  OSAM-UAV will be highlighted in an upcoming UAS Symposium by John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL).

Eighteen teams competed, with some of the toughest competitors from the University of West Florida, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, the University of California, San Diego, the United States Air Force Academy, the University of Alberta, Delhi College of Engineering, and Cornell, among others.  Each team designed and built a robotic airplane, capable of flying autonomously along a pre-defined flight path, while transmitting flight information and images to a ground control station, where targets from the images were located, and their GPS coordinates reported to the judges.  Lettered plywood targets spelled out the Navy motto, "Semper Fi #1". 

The team operates out of the Center for Self-Organizing and Intelligent Systems (CSOIS), which is directed by Dr. Yangquan Chen, Ph.D.  The OSAM-UAV team participation at the AUVSI is a result of a joint research project with CSOIS and the Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL), Remote Sensing using Small Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.  Competing moves this research forward as well as giving members the opportunity to test OSAM-UAV against international competitors.   Haiyang Chao, a Ph. D. student and Research Assistant to Dr. Chen, and Chris Hall lead the team.

 
   
      
      Writer: Jennifer M. Carroll, email
      435-797-8123
      6.22.2009