2011 Kipr Autonomous Aerial Vehicle

The KISS Institute is pleased to announce that the Beta Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Contest was a success Saturday Dec. 3th, 2011.

1st Place - Team SNARC (College Level) - Norman, OK

2nd Place - Team Southwest Covenant (High School Level) - Yukon, OK

3rd Place - Team Saint John's (High School Level) - Houston, TX

4th Place Team SODA Chloe (High School Level) - Los Lunas, NM

5th Place Team SODA Zack (High School Level) - Los Lunas, NM

All teams traveled to the University of Oklahoma on Saturday for the Beta Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Competition.

The goal of the Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Contest was to more widely introduce the concept, capabilities and study of autonomous rotor-craft vehicles to the college and secondary school communities. The contest serves as an emphasizes on planning, control, sensing, and system level problem solving; All required when working with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and hybrid ground / UAV systems.

The overall impression of the competition for the kids was a good and unique experience. "It was really cool! We talked to other teams and we learned a lot form them." said Zack of Team SODA (School of Dreams Academy).

Chloe from SODA (School of Dreams Academy) liked the fact that "We are all from different backgrounds and we all had different approaches to the contest. Contestants are given the same task, yet we all had such different perspectives on it. For example, one team used a grappling hook to flip over the Aerial Vehicle; it was cool."

We like to thank all our competitors for making the Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Contest a success. We look forward to developing the contest further and please stay tuned about upcoming events for the Autonomous Aerial Vehicle at www.kipr.org and www.botball.org. As one contestant mentioned, "We hope to have another competition at GCER 2012 (Global Conference on Educational Robotics); we shall see."

Below are some media links about the contest.

Article - Oklahoma student robotics teams' competition takes flight. - NewsOK.com

Gallery - Oklahoma student robotics teams' competition takes flight.- NewsOK.com