• Project Overview
  • What is AUVSI?
  • Why Join AUVSI?
  • The Competition
  • Competition Results
  • Sponsors
  • Contact
  • Rules
• 2009 - 2010
  • Team 1: Daniel Bedenko
    • Updates
    • Team
    • Strategy/Approach
    • Design
    • Pictures
    • Videos
    • Poster & Publications
• 2008 - 2009
  • Team 1: Karthik Balakrishnan
    • Updates
    • Team
    • Strategy/Approach
    • Design
    • Pictures
    • Videos
    • Poster & Publications

Meet the crew that made UCSD's AUVSI possible.[From left to right]

Back: Tom Hong, Derrick Lam, Chad Foerster, Shane Grant, Josh Egbert, Truong Nguyen

Front:Daniel Bedenko, Karthik Balakrishnan, Matt Smallcomb

AUVSI, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, is the world’s largest organization devoted to advancing the unmanned systems community. AUVSI sponsors the annual Student UAS (unmanned aerial system) competition which challenges students to design, build, and test an autonomous airplane. UCSD’s AUVSI club is a multi-disciplinary group of students who compete in the UAS competition. The unmanned aerial system consists of three main components: the airframe, the payloads including imaging and autopilot, and the ground station. The goal of the project is to build a UAS that can fly autonomously and provide intelligence about targets located in a search area in real time.

The completion of this project requires the cooperation of students from aerospace, electrical, and computer engineering. Students involved in previous years have learned to design individual components, such as a wing or power supply, integrate components with engineers from different fields, and work together with a team to accomplish a complex mission. ECE students can get hands on experience in electrical design and controls. For the upcoming year, we are building and integrating a gyro stabilized gimbal system which will be capable of geo-pointing and position feedback for real time target tracking. We are also creating a new ground image and control station to support the onboard payload system.

Here is the Falco's payloads bay. Inside, there are two GPS systems, autopilot controller, RXMux, and cameras.

At the 2009 Competition, UCSD AUVSI Team took 2^nd Place.
We are looking for new members in Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, to continue our efforts. Freshman and Softmores welcome!

Contact Us

AUVSI Project Posters

Rules of the competition: pdf

To join UCSD's AUVSI, please visit our Google Groups page.

For more information, visit the official competition website.