The UK Ministry of Defence kicked off its Grand Challenge competition finals today on Salisbury Plain with 11 competitors vying for the RJ Mitchell Trophy and a potential developmental contract with the UK Armed forces for their UAVs. Each team gets one hour to send their systems (both airborne and ground-based) into Copehill Down village to indetify threats from a mixture of props and real actors portraying enemy combatants. Copehill Down is not actually a real village, but a mockup of a generic European village as a FIBUA (Fighting In Built Up Areas) training ground. While some of the teams competing are relative uknowns, European defence heavyweights like Qinetiq and Thales have also joined the fray. A winner will be picked on the 19th. Here are a few of the entries:
This is an internal combustion engine that can be used by the GFS and actually receiving US military funding as well.
Quad-rotors were big this year. This is the London based-Swarm Systems and the University of Manchester's Tumbleweed. And here is a video of the I-Spy Tri-Rotor
Qinetiq was displaying their Cortex UAV prototype that takes off and lands on its tail, but converts to conventional flying in the air. The competition version had previously crashed. Here is a cool video of it in flight.
All picture credits: Flight Global
[Flight Global]
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