IMechE UAS Challenge

SAM IS ....
IMechE UAS Competition 2025

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) UAS Challenge is an annual competition that brings together teams from universities around the world to design, build, and fly an unmanned aerial system (UAS). The challenge aims to encourage innovation and practical engineering skills among students.

Key Highlights of the IMechE UAS Challenge:

  1. Objective: Teams are tasked with developing a UAS that can perform a series of missions, which typically include autonomous flight, payload delivery, and obstacle avoidance.
  2. Rules and Guidelines: Each year, the challenge releases a new set of rules and guidelines that teams must follow. 
  3. Registration: Teams must register by a specified deadline to participate. For the 2024 challenge, registration is open until October 31, 2023
  4. Competition Phases: The challenge usually consists of several phases, including design reviews, flight readiness reviews, and the final fly-off event where teams demonstrate their UAS’s capabilities.
  5. Innovation and Skills: The competition emphasizes innovation, technical skills, and teamwork. It provides students with hands-on experience in aerospace engineering and project management

For more information

The mission: ”A natural disaster has occurred with a large, populated area devasted. Several thousand people are cut-off, without power, fresh running water, food or medicines. In built-up
areas buildings have come down and rubble is hampering efforts to deliver emergency supplies. Time is critical. A UAS supply mission is launched from the Rescue Centre some distance away at the end of the current logistics trail. The UAS operate automatically, launching, transiting rapidly, navigating via pre-planned waypoints in a tight urban environment with rapid changes of direction, delivering aid safely and accurately to where it is most needed. They return via a different route and remain at low level to de conflict from incoming UAS and overflying crewed aircraft. This requires them to fly through the streets of the damaged communities – this will involve narrow corridors and rapid changes of direction. The UAS repeats the mission in all weather conditions until the need to drop aid subsides, sustaining a vital lifeline until a large scale rescue mission can be mounted to evacuate people from the devastated area.”

Education and Development Objectives of the Event
The Challenge has a number of education and development objectives, in particular to:
 Provide an opportunity for students to learn practical aerospace engineering skills for their future careers;
 Provide an opportunity for students to explore innovative airframe and systems engineering design of a complex system;
 Require them to follow an industry-recognised engineering development lifecycle (design, development, review and demonstration) against a demanding mission requirement;
 Provide an opportunity for students to develop and demonstrate team working, project management, manufacturing, leadership and commercial skills as well as technical competence;
 Provide an opportunity to demonstrate professionalism when exposed to real life flight safety considerations and live flight environments;
 Enhance employment opportunities in the sector;
 Stimulate interest in the civil UAS field;
 Foster inter-university collaboration in the UAS technology area, and to provide a forum for interdisciplinary research; and
 Enable students to interact with knowledgeable and experienced aerospace engineers on an aerospace project, through mentoring, webinars and feedback throughout the project.

September 2024

SAM IS ....
IMechE UAS Challenge 2019

16-18 June, 2019

Snowdonia Aerospace Centre, Llanbedr, LL45 2PX

 

The UAS Challenge (Unmanned Aircraft Systems Challenge) is the IMechE leading annual student competition in the aerospace sector.

It leads the way in promoting value and cohesion within the industry, providing unique opportunities to universities, their teams, the individual participants and of course for our partnering organisations.

Launched in 2014 with the key objectives of developing professional engineers and inspiring the next generation, the Challenge is now in its fifth year. Each annual Challenge cycle kicks-off in October, ending with a final event in June the following year.

Teams of undergraduates from all over the world take part in the Challenge. They undertake a full design and build cycle of a UAS with specific mission objectives. The Challenge bridges the gap between academia and industry in developing applied UAS-related activities, providing the perfect opportunity to strengthen links with industry, other universities and enhance employment opportunities for graduates in the aerospace sector. See competition rules.

The Challenge provides several categories of awards:

Grand Champion

Highest aggregate score from the PDR, CDR, A0 poster and the Flight Demonstration

Runner Up

2nd highest aggregate score from the PDR, CDR, A0 poster and the Flight Demonstration

3rd Place

3rd highest aggregate score from the PDR, CDR, A0 poster and the Flight Demonstration

Innovation

Most innovative concept taken through to flight demonstration.

Design

Entrant with a well-structured design approach, the most elegant and well thought through design, as described through the Concept Paper, PDR and CDR stages that fully meets all the requirements laid down in the rules.

Scrutineer’s

Best presented UAS that is fully compliant with the competition rules.

Safety & Airworthiness

Entrant developing the best combination of a well-articulated safety case, with evidence that safety and airworthiness have been considered throughout the design and development stages, the UAS exhibiting practical safety features, and demonstrating safe operation and team behaviour.

Business Proposition

Entrant with the most promising business and marketing case presented to a panel of sponsors during the flight demonstration event, reflecting a well-articulated understanding of the market and good alignment of the UAS capabilities and cost projections with the target market.

Most Promise

Entrant which couldn’t quite make it all work on the day, but where the team showed most ingenuity, teamwork, resilience in the face of adversity, and a promising design for next year’s competition.

Highest placed new entrant

Highest mission scores for a university that has not previously taken part.

Media & Engagement

Team which engages most effectively with local media, schools, and social media to promote participation and engagement with the Challenge.

Our best wishes to the 2019 Teams!

  1. Wrexham Glyndwr University – Team B-G-F-E
  2. University of Dundee – Haggis Aerospace
  3. University of Huddersfield – Sparrow Hawk
  4. University of Huddersfield – Harrier Hawk
  5. University College London – Team Newton
  6. University of Southern Denmark – Team SDU Eagles
  7. University of Southampton – Team Volta
  8. University of Southampton – Team Eagle
  9. University of Southampton – Team Colibri
  10. University of Sheffield – Project HEX
  11. University of Bath – Team Bath Drones
  12. Sheffield Hallam University – Team Hallam
  13. Cambridge University – Team CUUASS
  14. Loughborough University – Osiris
  15. Cranfield University – Team Blackbird
  16. Warwick University – Warwick Drone
  17. Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Pakistan – Team Foxtrot
  18. University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka – Moira Avions
  19. Imperial College London – Project ICAV
  20. Queen’s University Belfast, team FLYTANIC
  21. University of Sheffield – Team Volaticus
  22. Brunel University – Team Brunel
  23. University of Twente, Netherlands – Team A3T
  24. National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan – Team NUST Air Works Beta
  25. National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan – Team NUST Air Works Alpha
  26. University of Hertfordshire – UH Valkyrie
  27. Coventry University – Team Phoenix
  28. DHA Suffa University, Pakistan – Team DSU Bur’raq
  29. University of Surrey – Team Peryton
  30. University College London – Team Nova
  31. Concordia University, Canada – AHS Stingers
  32. Queen’s University Belfast – Hibernica Liberandum

For more information: https://www.imeche.org/events/challenges/uas-challenge

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