Development of a Low Cost Autonomous Aerial Robotics System

The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) is designed for colleges and universities to compete in the design and construction of an autonomous aerial vehicle. Pima Community College is being represented by the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Club. The UAV Club has designed a primary vehicle and a drop vehicle that will be used in the competition. They were designed with autopilots that will work closely with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and ground based computers to control the aircraft. The following will explain the mission objectives and their purposes, the purpose of the design of the vehicles, the problems encountered and solved, design of software and the use of optical sensors to achieve success. [2.a] STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems started the IARC as an annual competition to get colleges and universities involved in the future of unmanned aerial vehicles. Th