Palmdale area students first United States team to win
The Phantom Soldiers team from Knight High School in Palmdale
The Phantom Soldiers team from Knight High School in Palmdale won the 2016 International UAV Competition, Airborne Delivery Challenge. The students competed among 39 teams from 7 different regions of the world, and became the first team from the United States to ever win. Their teacher, James Stockdale, accompanied them to Brisbane, Australia and was thrilled with their win and $5,000 prize.
“I was so proud of our kids for having the tenacity to work through solving some very unique and difficult challenges for this competition,” said Stockdale.
The team was challenged to program autonomous systems to respond to a GPS feed, get servos to articulate in a reliable and repeatable way, and figure out how to not exceed impact forces on the dropping mechanism – all on a flying system.
“They rose to the challenge though, and put in the hours to overcome hurdle after hurdle that arose.”
After finishing in third place the previous two years in a row, the Phantom Soldiers were determined that this year they would not leave any detail unattended, and that they would aim for their best performance yet. Their extraordinary efforts were reflected by their score, as they were the highest scoring team to ever compete in the event.
Stockdale notes that key partnerships played a big part in his team’s success.
“The results that they were able to achieve this year could not have been possible without the help of the community around the team,” he said. “Donations of drones from the ATRE group, and support of local industry such as the Air Force Research Lab in drone preparation played a huge role in the team being ready for competition this year, as well as generous donations from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, PPG Aerospace, and others in the community.”
For more information, contact James Stockdale at jstockdale@avhsd.org or Larry McLaughlin at lmclaughlin@collegeofthedesert.edu.
