September 30, 2012
Outback Joe’s all set to go missing … but never fear, the UAVs are here!
This is the fifth time that Joe’s gone missing somewhere near Kingaroy, and the fifth time that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been despatched from around the world to find him.
That’s probably why some people would say “Outback Joe” is a real dummy…
A total of 23 teams will be competing in the 2012 Outback Challenge which gets under way at Kingaroy Airport tomorrow (Monday).
In the Search and Rescue Challenge teams must launch aircraft capable of searching a four square mile area, up to five nautical miles from Kingaroy Airport.
The “target” is a dummy (that’s “Outback Joe”) positioned “in a typical resting pose in a rural setting”.
The GPS co-ordinates of the search area are provided to each team and their unmanned aircraft must not travel outside the search area or transit lane.
When a team locates Outback Joe, they must provide the GPS co-ordinates to the judges. If their UAV is within 100m of Joe’s location, the team will then be given approval to deliver the emergency package. This consists of 500ml of water which must be dropped as closely as possible to Joe (without landing on him). The UAV must then return to the Kingaroy airport for recovery.
No team has ever won the Search and Rescue Challenge, but in 2010 a team of students from the University of North Dakota located the elusive dummy but failed to drop the bottle of water to him, just missing out on the $50,000 first prize. However, they took home $15,000 as consolation.
Nine teams who have been preparing for almost two years for the event will be taking part in this year’s Search and Rescue Challenge and competing for the $50,000 first prize:
- Forward Robotics (Canada)
- Carabo (USA)
- OpenUAS (Netherlands)
- Monash UAS (Victoria)
- Canberra UAV (ACT)
- Wild Hogs (Qld)
- CompassUAV (Qld)
- TGIF (Qld)
- QUT SRUAV (Qld)
As well as the senior competition, 14 High School teams will also compete in the Airborne Delivery Challenge, ie to deliver a supplied “emergency package” to Outback Joe.
Two hurdles will map out the course and Outback Joe will be positioned between them. The UAV controller must ensure that the UAV flies above these hurdles. The delivery of the payload will be controlled either by the “mission manager” (who cannot see the target zone) or automatically by systems on board the aircraft. The aim is to drop the package as close as possible to Joe.
Each team will be allowed 20 minutes to conduct up to three drops, including all setting up and packing up of any equipment.
The High School teams, competing for an $8000 first prize, are:
- Screamin’ Eagles (Aviation High, Qld)
- Strikers (Aviation High, Qld)
- Thunderbirds (Aviation High,Qld)
- MUROC Hawks (Mueller College, Qld)
- MUROC Predators (Mueller College, Qld)
- MUROC TeleBirdz (Mueller College, Qld)
- MUROC Vipers (Mueller College, Qld)
- MUROC Raiders (Mueller College, Qld)
- MUROC Hectix (Mueller College, Qld)
- Dickson College UAV (Dickson College, ACT)
- Calamvale Raptors (Calamvale Community College, Qld)
- Calamvale Lightning (Calamvale Community College, Qld)
- Calamvale Rhinos (Calamvale Community College, Qld)
- O.J.R.S. (Riverton and District High School, SA)
The Outback Challenge has been held in Kingaroy every year from 2007-2010. However last year, only the High School competition was run, and this was held near Ipswich.
