Student Ingenuity Takes Off in Unmanned Plane Contest

Tests Aid Navy and Help Collegians in Careers

With laptops open and hands nervously poised above the keyboards, three college students waited in the middle of a runway at Webster Outlying Field in St. Inigoes, ready for the words that would send them into action.

"Gentlemen, start your computers!"

Amid a flurry of tapping keyboards, another teammate started the propeller of a miniature yellow airplane until it rattled down the runway and into the air.

These student engineers from Polytechnic University in New York were among eight college teams that came to St. Mary's County last weekend to plot out simulated targets -- missiles, tanks and missile launchers -- for the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) they had designed and built. It was part of the second annual Student UAV Competition hosted by the Association for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles International (AUVSI).

In the 40 minutes allotted, each team had to identify six waypoints on the ground and provide an image of them to the four judges. How they did this was up to them as long as they followed Defense Department requirements.

Some teams, such as Polytechnic, attached a small digital camera to the UAV cabin to record images and then downloaded the data after the UAV landed.

Others, such as the team from Istanbul, had more complicated systems that could transfer data in real time during the flight.

Each team that entered the competition received a MicroPilot flight control device worth $5,000, but all other funds and equipment had to be raised through their own efforts.

The team from North Carolina State University in Raleigh raised $50,000, with almost $40,000 more in equipment donations, said Sean Angermuller of Wilmington, N.C. Some of the sources of contributions were evident in the company logos teams pasted to their UAVs.

By Navy standards, the student-made UAVs were simple and inexpensive. But one of the objectives of the contest is to help the Navy develop low-cost ideas.

"[The students] try to create a very cheap vehicle with cheap systems," said Robert Behler, a retired major general and now an engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who served as a judge. "It shows people like me that are working in this field some creative ways to do things."

The student engineers were not only field-testing their UAVs but also themselves; they distributed résumés to the competition's sponsors, which included Northrop Grumman Corp. and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"I'm impressed you can come from an academic environment and have such practical skills," said Rick Greer, a communications engineer from Hollywood. "We think that some of these kids are the best of the best in engineering, and we need people with UAV experience."