R-Pod-1 – School of Business and Engineering Vaud – First Prize
The UAV-g 2011 Conference was a gathering at ETH Zurich and at Birrfeld Airfield of 220 scientists, users, delegates of government authorities and manufacturers coming from over 30 different countries. At the conference the current research on UAS with the emphasis on applications in Geomatics was presented and discussed under the consideration of user requirements. The focus of the conference was on the exchange of UAV-g research activities between the different disciplines (artificial intelligence, robotics, photogrammetry, geodesy, computer vision, and aerospace engineering) and furthermore, the needs for future developments were formulated.
In the keynote speech Roland Siegwart (Vice President Research and Corporate Relations and chair of the autonomous system lab ETH Zurich) gave a fascinating overview of autonomous navigation, positioning and collision avoidance and showed the trend towards the miniaturization of UAV systems. Currently available UAV platforms can already be used as measuring system for various mapping and monitoring applications. However, the operation of UAVs is limited by legal regulations. For example, in Switzerland autonomous flying model aircrafts with a take-off weight of over 30 kg require a particular authorization by the Federal Office of Civil Applications (FOCA). Furthermore, UAVs with a take-off weight of fewer than 30 kg can only be operated in restricted flight zones, line of sight and operated with a back-up pilot who can take over the control of the system at any time.
Swiss College of Agriculture – Bambi Microcopter -Second Prize
During the flight demonstrations at Birrfeld Airfield, various autonomously flying UAVs were presented, such as open source systems, fixed wings, a helicopter, multicopters, a blimp and a motorized kite. The best presentations of the live show were awarded with the “Most Innovative UAV Application and Demonstration – Award” sponsored by Hexagon Technology Center/Leica Geosystems. The R-Pod system could persuade the jury due to the light take-off weight (500 g) and the flexible applicability. A quadrocopter (open source project MikroKopter) produced by a team of the Swiss College of Agriculture (SHL / BFH) was awarded with the second prize, while the third prize went to Ascending Technology for the Falcon 8 system.
Ascending Technologies – Falcon 8 – Third Prize
Future research and developments will be presented at the conference UAV-g 2013 in Rostock (Germany).
Source: Press Release