2014 UAV Outback Challenge

The 2014 UAV Outback Challenge (OBC) was the 2nd time CanberraUAV had entered the competition.

We came 1st place, successfully dropping a bottle of water to within 2.6m of Joe.

A total of 16 teams made it to Kingaroy, 4 teams being able to drop a water bottle within 100m of Joe (another team dropped the bottle more than 100m from Joe).

For more information about the event:

Hardware/Software used

Airframe: VQ Porter (2.7m wingspan. 12kg takeoff weight) with DLE35 engine

Flight Controller: Pixhawk running APM:Plane 3.1.1

Datalink1: RFD900’s with 3dBi patch antennas of the aircraft and 6dBi Yagi antenna of the ground

Datalink2: Ubiquiti Rocket 5.8GHz. 28dBi MIMO antenna on the ground, and a 10dBi MIMO omni antenna in the aircraft.

Camera: PointGrey Chameleon

Image Processing: Odroid XU board running Unbuntu and the cuav imaging software

Ground Station: 3 networked laptops running the MAVProxy GCS software.

Procedures and Reference

We also created the following documents for our own use at the competition (and practice flights):

The rules:

Deliverables:

Procedures and Checklists:

After the Challenge

We completed a post-OBC review here:
There are also reviews by Stephen and Tridge on DIYDrones: