Prize Roundup - June 23, 2009

@wikkit - http://twitpic.com/7y2lu - Paul Breed demonstrates an autonomous helicopter flight at FAR today.

(That was posted on June 20).

@worden - Was just at the Pentagon talking about cool airships - green, low cost means to transport people and cargo

(Based on this conversation I suspect he knows about the Airship Z-Prize proposal, too).

Speaking of airships, Up Ship! was just at the Vertical Challenge, which sounds like an aviation prize competition, but was actually a helicopter air show.

New ARCA Site - ARCA at Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams site

UAV competition draws students from 18 colleges - DCMilitary.com - The student teams, judges, staff and sponsors were met with near perfect weather for this year's competition. The object for the flying portion of the competition was for an unmanned, radio controllable, aircraft to be launched and transition, or continue, to autonomous flight. It was then to navigate a specified course and use onboard payload sensors to locate and assess a series of man-made targets before returning to the launch point for landing. Each team was required to complete the task within 40 minutes.

The Autonomous Surface Vehicle competition and the IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition) were also held recently. Here's some news from those competitions:

ERAU competes with unmanned vehicles - Campus News (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University)

AUVSI International Autonomous Surface Vehicle Competition - ASV Competition page with videos and other information from the competition

Robot boats vie for best rescue in Beach competition - Hampton Roads.com

aonomus ASV - photos

It's been a while... - John Fertitta

PSU Robotics - 2009 IGVC Competition photos