Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development.
"The Eagle is down, the Eagle is down, over", crackled over the public address system at the Indian air force's drop zone area that is being used for the flight trials for the competition part of this conference. Once again the MAV had crashed after a few seconds or minutes of flight, a scene that was repeated throughout the day.
The expansive drop zone stretched out before us, with the teams' starting point about 1km (0.62miles) away from the viewing gallery, seen in the graphic below as a green bar. Situated near the last of the mission waypoints if a MAV and its UGV had got as far as us then there would have been a winner. As can be seen from the graphic the mission that had to be completed was a complex one with mines to detect, terrorists to locate and a hostage to find.
Located inside the viewing gallery tent we watched events unfold with video screens provided with a feed from cameras around the drop zone. And pretty much that is the only view we got of the MAVs as none of the teams got close to the viewing gallery, while I was there, from about 0830h that morning. I did hear that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's team, who purchased their MAV from a German company, did a whole lot better; but that isn't saying much.
Provided with a lunch and plenty of drinking water and even internet access (which I hadn't anticipated and had left my laptop back at the hotel) the tent was a comfortable place to while away the hours listening to announcement after announcement of problems with the MAVs, mostly. With the previous days morning flight time lost to bad weather many of today's technical presentations had been made yesterday and so the organisers pressed on for a mid-afternoon finish to the teams mission attempts.
But despite the extra time there was no more success and this fuzzy picture of a quad-rotor MAV on one of the tent's video screens was again, as close as got to see any of the teams' vehicles. Proving once again that aerospace projects are harsh mistresses.
In the previous MAV competitions I have attended, in Garmisch Parten-Kirchen in Germany, in Florida in the US and Toulouse, France, many of the teams had basic problems with their vehicles and the increasing complexity of the missions over the last three years has not raised the bar for anyone. Instead I have witnessed a lot of failure.
That is not to blame anyone, the universities, who make up most of the teams, have student members that come and go as they complete their related studies, they have very limited resources and I suspect that the increase in capability that has been required to keep up with the more demanding mission requirements has not been possible to achieve with the 12-month periods between each competition.
I think the US military needs to take a step back, redesign the missions and have a think about what new criteria they use to judge the teams because upping the demanding requirements will simply end academic interest.
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