Students from across the globe will compete in the Rocket City next week as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) hosts its Sapience Search and Rescue Drone Competition.
Undergraduate and graduate students from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Austria will compete by demonstrating their autonomous drone technology in realistic search and rescue scenarios. The event is being organized in part by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and taking place on its private testing range near Huntsville International Airport.
“These drones are moving in an area that isn’t mapped, they have to stay at an altitude where they could run into things, they have to move around them, they have to sense targets, decide what they are, it has to be able to tell a mannequin from a real person, it has to be able to tell a person from a wall,” said Casey Still, UAH Deputy Director of Uncrewed Systems. “All they get to do is press go.”…