UAE Innovation Challenge: Taking to the skies

Students from the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) capped months of hard work with a series of flights over the Zayed Cricket Stadium.

Standing at the edge of the pitch with judges and onlookers, they watched as their carefully constructed, unmanned planes were released into the air.

“I had zero background in airplanes. It is so exciting to do something we never expected we could do,” said Yaqoob Yousuf Al Awadhi of Dubai Men’s College, who was one of the 70 students competing in the UAE Innovation Challenge Abu Dhabi 2012, hosted by the HCT in cooperation with Northrop Grumman Corporation and Abu Dhabi Autonomous Systems Investment (ADASI).

The competition invited HCT students to design, build and pilot an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle. For many participants, the event was as much of a learning opportunity as a platform to demonstrate their existing knowledge and skills.

“None of these students are aircraft design students,” said competition judge Doug Fronius, chief engineer for advanced concepts at Northrop Grumman. “Some are mechanical engineering students, which is close. Some are electrical engineering students, which has very little to do with airplane design. We try to emphasise the process of engineering and working as a team versus airplane design. They have to learn something about airplane design to do it, but we make it so that everything they need to know they can learn in the course of this event.”

Accordingly, the actual plane and its performance determined only 50 per cent of a team’s final score. The other half came from an evaluation of what the team had accomplished in the months leading up to the two-day competition. Each team had to deliver an oral presentation on team management, design approach, construction plan, manufacturing and testing. The panel of five judges then questioned the team members on their understanding of how the vehicle operates.

“In the engineering process, knowing how to build things that you’ve designed is critical to doing well. Students in the colleges here are very theoretical. We want them to do practical engineering and try to connect the practical to the theoretical, because that will make them better engineers,” explained Mr Fronius.

Before vehicle testing began, the teams — nine this year, from different HCT campuses throughout the UAE — were ranked based on the results of their oral presentation. Fronius affirmed that a good flight time could easily spell victory for a low-ranking team.

The second edition of the challenge upped the ante from the 2011 event by requiring that the planes be capable of flying autonomously. “Autopilot is when you give control to the aircraft and you program it so it knows what to do itself. You give it dimensions and it goes from one place to another as desired,” described Shereen Al Mazroui of Abu Dhabi Men’s College, the first Emirati girl to join her school’s aviation engineering programme. Students like Al Mazroui learned how to equip planes with an autopilot program with the help of engineering mentors from Northrop Grumman, several of whom were on hand to run the final flight tests.

On the competition days, teams were a bustle of activity as students and advisors made final adjustments to the planes. When a team was called forward, it presented the plane for a weigh-in and a final check to make sure all the equipment was working properly. Organisers then gained clearance from local air traffic control, as the planes can climb to heights of over 300m. Finally, a mentor took the plane into the field, breaking into a slow run before launching the plane from his hand.

Each unmanned aerial vehicle got 30 motorised seconds to climb as high as it could. The plane was then left to glide down with the engine turned off, guided by autopilot to stay within the stadium’s parameters. If it started to malfunction or veer out of bounds, those running the test switched over to manual control and docked points from the final score. Even with the tremendous amount of knowledge and skill that went into producing these unmanned aerial vehicles, luck still had a role to play.

On the first day of the challenge, a team from Dubai’s Men College achieved a stunning flight time of over five minutes, while most other teams were clocking in between 1.5 and 3 minutes. Fronius explained that a ‘thermal’, or a column of rising air, had formed over the field in the afternoon heat, keeping the plane aloft for longer than would otherwise be possible. Winners of the Innovation Challenge will receive an all expenses-paid trip to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Convention in the USA.

Win or lose, Khadija Al Noamani from Abu Dhabi Men’s College is happy with what she is taking away from the challenge: “I have had an experience of making something new, and the most important thing is that it will help me in my studies.”

aisha@khaleejtimes.com