The competition is over now. We were unable to complete level two though we were very close. We had multiple engine failures during our last attempt but the amazing pilot from Waterloo was consistently able to deadstick it back to safety. Unfortunately we weren’t able to keep it in the air long enough to initiate a proper attempt. We did manage to get a manual pass of the town that had the image in plain site but it was at a bank angle that exceeded what our vision software was capable of recognizing. We were going to setup for a corrected pass of the town that would eliminate this problem when the engine failed again. Our plane came pretty close to crashing but the pilot managed to bring it back to the runway safely. At this point we did not have enough time remaining during our attempt to get the plane back in the air. At least our system is still intact. Some other teams were not so lucky.
Embry-Riddle had spent the previous 24 hours or so rebuilding their helicopter that crashed on the first flight of the second day. They got it back into the air for their last attempt and it crashed again. It was pretty bad to watch. I think Jayme might have caught some pictures of it happening.
The team from India couldn’t find parts to fix their plane that was damaged during shipping so they bought a new plane at the hobby store in town. Unfortunately the plane couldn’t handle the extra weight of their autopilot system and it couldn’t get up into the air.
It is hard to watch any of these aircraft go down knowing how much time and effort was put into designing and building them. Even though our system kept failing on us we are very relieved that it didn’t suffer any major damage.
We will not know any of the standings from the competition until the banquet later tonight. We did not officially complete any levels this year but we were at least able to demonstrate our awesome vision software to the judges during a test on the runway. A couple of teams completed level one and I think one team might have completed level two. Georgia Tech came very close to completing level four but they were unable to get their rover properly deployed into the target building. Since no teams completed level four and this is the last year for this particular mission, the prize money will be dispersed between teams based on their performance. I will post more details of the competition results and how we fared once I obtain the information tonight.
I will also post more pictures once they are available to me.