Student UAS Competition

High school STEM teams will participate in an exciting indoor Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)/Drone obstacle course challenge. The competition requires teams to navigate their drones through a series of progressively complex obstacles, designed to test their piloting skills and problem-solving abilities. This event promotes friendly rivalry among STEM programs from local schools. To ensure every team is fully prepared, a comprehensive briefing will be provided to STEM educators and team leads, covering all competition details. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a globally renowned professional engineering organization, will generously provide drones to all registered high school teams, ensuring equitable participation.

To successfully complete the course, each team must navigate their drones through a series of LED-lit gates, as shown in the TRACK section below. The gates, approximately 4×4 feet in size and arranged in pairs, serve as the primary checkpoints. Timing begins as soon as the drone takes off from the starting location and stops once the drone lands in the designated finish zone. Failure to pass through a required gate will result in disqualification for that run. Accuracy and precision are key to competing effectively in this event.

A panel of five judges will evaluate team performance using a standardized scoring rubric to ensure impartiality and consistency. Each student team will have multiple opportunities to fly their drone during their allotted time, navigating through various scenarios using live video feeds to complete their tasks. Teams may perform as many runs as possible within the time limit, with their best-recorded attempt used for scoring. While battery swaps are allowed during runs, teams must use the same drone throughout their performance.

Team collaboration is a critical factor in this competition. Every student on the team will have the opportunity to pilot the drone during their assigned turn. Timing begins when the drone lifts off and only concludes once it has completed the course. All run times will be recorded, and each team’s performance will be tracked throughout the competition. Success will demand both individual effort and strong teamwork to achieve the best overall results.

This segment of the competition challenges university-level drone enthusiasts and engineering labs to pit their autonomous drone capabilities against peers from other institutions. Participating teams will collaboratively develop algorithms enabling their drones to autonomously navigate a basic course while identifying critical objects scattered throughout. This is achieved by leveraging the drone’s camera and integrating advanced computer vision techniques. The university team that demonstrates the best combination of speed, precision, and algorithm performance in autonomously completing the course and identifying objects will emerge as the winner. The competition will recognize the top three teams, each receiving 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place awards accompanied by cash prizes. Additionally, winning universities will gain recognition from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a premier global professional engineering organization.

University teams are responsible for bringing their own drones, which must be approved by the DASC Drone Competition Committee prior to the event. Teams will also have the opportunity to reserve the competition course for practice runs in advance of competition day. Practice reservations will depend on the total number of teams competing, and all practice sessions, as well as UAS checkouts, must be scheduled with the DASC on-site registration team and the UAS Competition Coordinator.

In addition to successfully navigating the course, teams will be tasked with a computer vision challenge to identify generic rubber duckies placed at random locations throughout the course. To confirm identification, the drone must hover above a duck for two seconds. This standardized hovering method ensures consistent evaluation and minimizes the risk of false-positive identifications. The placement of the duckies will be randomized for each team to prevent spectators or competing teams from gaining an unfair advantage by learning their locations before participation. The scoring system for this task and the overall performance evaluation can be reviewed in the “Competition Rubric” section located at the end of this document.

A panel of five judges will evaluate each team’s performance using a standardized scoring rubric, ensuring consistency and fairness. Teams will have multiple opportunities to fly their UAS during their designated time slots and will face varying scenarios that they must navigate using real-time video feeds to complete the tasks. Each team’s highest-scoring run will be considered as their official competition score. Battery swaps will be allowed, but teams must use the same drone throughout the competition to maintain consistency.

In the event of a tie or closely contested scores for the top positions, a “fly-off” may be conducted among the top teams to determine the Grand Prize winner. This added challenge ensures a clear and conclusive outcome for the competition’s highest honors.

Winning teams will be announced, and prizes will be presented during the Awards Luncheon, which will immediately follow the conclusion of the competition. This formal recognition celebrates the effort, innovation, and teamwork of competing universities and highlights their excellence to an audience of industry leaders and peers.