This drone from Advanced Aircraft Company took first place in NIST's UAS Endurance Challenge with 112 minutes of flight time with a heavy payload.
Credit: Advanced Aircraft Company
BOULDER, Colo. — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently announced the four winners of the 2021 PSCR First Responder UAS Endurance Challenge. In the four-stage challenge, participants designed, built and flew an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) with the goal of flying for the longest time possible while carrying a 10-pound (4.5-kilogram) payload. The first-place prize of $100,000 went to Team AAC from Advanced Aircraft Company; the second-place prize of $40,000 went to Team IE from Intelligent Energy Ltd; and the third-place prize of $20,000 went to Team ARCC from Penn State’s Autonomous Robotics Competition Club. Additional honors were awarded to these teams and one other team, Team Endure Air, for eight $5,000 Best-in-Class prizes.
“Our grant programs and prize challenges help us make great leaps forward in solving public safety concerns by initiating collaboration with industry, academia and the public safety community,” said Dereck Orr, chief of NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) division, which managed the challenge. “The challenge has helped advance our mission and UAS technology, with the winning team surpassing 112 minutes of flight time for FAA Part 107 drone flights, which are systems weighing less than 55 pounds flown by certified drone pilots.”
One of the barriers for the public safety community is not having access to a UAS that can fly for long periods of time, 90 minutes or longer, while carrying a heavy payload. For example, in a typical search-and-rescue mission, emergency responders may be dispatched to a location where broadband LTE communications are unavailable. To maintain communications, a UAS equipped with an LTE system can be deployed to extend ..
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