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SFU Team Guardian's New UAVs Ready for North American Drone Competitions
Wednesday, March 1, 2017Company Profile | Follow Company
Burnaby, BC, March 1, 2017--(T-Net)--Simon Fraser University's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) team, known as Team Guardian, has added new technology and aircraft to its fleet to compete in two North American competitions this spring.
The student contests are held by Unmanned Systems Canada (USC) in Alma, Quebec (April) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in St. Mary's County, Maryland (June). The competitions offer real-world challenges for the evolving UAV community.
The Faculty of Applied Sciences student-led team, based at SFU's Surrey campus, comprises 20 members. Most are from the School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering (MSE) and the School of Computing Science's software systems program.
The team is currently preparing for the contests and recently launched a crowdfunding campaign (until March 9) to help cover travel and other competition-related costs, and enable more students to attend the competitions: https://sfu.useed.net/give/team-guardian-2017.
“In Quebec, we'll be monitoring a wild goose population and will need to race the clock while surveying the area, identifying nests and performing the delicate task of retrieving an egg for scientific analysis,” says team captain Kris Gjernes.
“Later in the spring, we'll push ourselves further in the AUVSI competition, where we'll focus on flight automation, target identification and supply drop off. In this scenario, we will be locating a lost hiker and performing an emergency supply drop.”
Founded in 2010, Team Guardian is open to SFU students from all faculties and programs across the university. The team works year-round to develop UAVs that solve pressing everyday issues.
The team's competition successes include first place in the 2016 Drone Fair University Challenge held at BCIT and second place in the 2016 and 2012 USC competitions.
From the start, the team has flown a fixed-wing aircraft with a robust autopilot and state-of-the-art vision system designed in-house. This has enabled them to survey search areas, identify and classify targets and even decipher QR codes.
The team has also succeeded at delivering a payload within five meters of a target using custom-developed hardware and software.
With increasing competition demands, Team Guardian has addressed several UAV updates, including:
• a new, larger fixed-wing airframe to help improve payload capacity and flight time;
• a hexacopter that will be introduced for the first time and will enable the team to deliver and retrieve objects with greater accuracy and reliability;
• an upgraded onboard camera, and data processing algorithms to permit higher altitude flights while improving image quality;
• and, for the first time, machine learning that will be implemented to assist in target recognition.
Team Guardian members and alumni say the group provides invaluable opportunities to apply skills learned in class while studying engineering at SFU. Through their experience with Team Guardian, several graduates have found co-op work placements or “dream jobs” at companies such as Tesla Motors and Amazon.
ABOUT TEAM GUARDIAN:
Team Guardian is a student-led engineering group based at SFU's Surrey campus that designs and builds unmanned aerial vehicles for national and international competitions. Since 2010, the team has provided opportunities for students to apply the skills and techniques learned in class to a real-world design challenge. Open to students across the university, each year junior members are welcomed and mentored by senior members, which allows them to immediately contribute to the team.
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