Welcome to the OSURC Aerial Team website!

Please forgive the fact that the website is still somewhat out of date (such as the design catagory), we are working on updating everything.

The OSU Robotics Club Aerial Team was formed in 2009 with the goal of competing in the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC). The IARC is an annual collegiate autonomous aerial robotics competition. The competition attempts to further the state of the art in aerial robotics by posing challenges that are not yet possible using current technology. In Winter 2010 the Aerial Team was re-established with entirely new team members and an entirely new dual rotor design. The new team has the same goal of competing in the IARC along with new goals such as competing in the SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition.

The 2009 competition was held at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in July. Teams were challeged to build a robot capable of entering and navigating through a nuclear reactor building, locating a control panel, and sending a video stream back to a base station in order to provide reactor operators with information about a malfunctioning reactor core. These tasks had to be completed autonomously in under 15 minutes with a platform weighing under 1.5kg. MIT built an impressive robot which fully completed the task, winning the competition.

The 2010 competition extends the challenge of indoor navigation, requiring robots to fly through a more complex building interior while avoiding security sensors. The objective of the misson is to find and remove a flash drive from the building. This challenge will remain until a team completes it. So far it has proven to be an extremely difficult task, as no team has come close to completing it since it has been introduced.

If you are interested in helping or have any questions, please contact our team leader, Daniel Miller at millerd4@onid.orst.edu