U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. -- Cadets took home a top industry research award May 6.
The Boeing Tri-Service Academy Capstone Competition is an annual contest between the Air Force, Army and Navy service academies. This year’s event required cadets and midshipmen to research methods to control an independent swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Cadet 1st Class Jasper Arneberg, an electrical engineering major here, took part in the competition. He said the Defense Department plans to develop swarms of UAVs in the next 25 years to be controlled by military ground forces.
“These swarms must identify and locate hostile targets,” he said. “The goal of this competition was to propose a potential solution using future technology and demonstrate some of these concepts.”
Arneberg said the strength of the Academy team was its attention to detail.
“We looked at so many different aspects of the problem,” he said. “We ran computer simulations to test different swarm configurations; created a custom stealth propeller for quad-copters that drastically reduced noise while increasing thrust; and demonstrated limited swarm autonomy with three UAVs taking pictures of targets on the ground.”
George York, an associate professor assigned to the Academy’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, said the Boeing competition challenges cadets and midshipmen to solve research problems.
“This project gives them a good understanding of the capabilities and limitations of autonomous systems and will help them make decisions about deploying this technology," he said.
Patricia Stevens, Boeing’s advanced vertical-lift senior manager, said the service academies performed well during the competition.
“Each [service academy] focused on different aspects of the problem,” she said. “If we could combine all three, we could have a nearly complete system. The Air Force Academy stood out as delivering an exemplary design and technology demonstrator.”
Cadet researchers participating in the competition were Arneberg and Cadets 1st Class Thomas Cowie, Tony Gasana, Austin Bolinger, Hunter Her, Alexander Leaf, Sabin Park, Dustin Weisner, Jasper Arneberg, Christopher Kiernan, Jordon Huff, Keenan Andrews, Aaron Stolze and Andrew Rosenthal.
Boeing’s vice president of engineering, defense and space and security, Dennis O’Donahue, visited the Air Force Academy to present the award to the team.
Dean of the Faculty Brig. Gen. Andrew Armacost congratulated the cadet researchers.
“The value of their work on technology that supports the warfighter cannot be underestimated,” he said. “Through these research competitions and academic projects, our cadets continue to innovate and develop technological advances that benefit the DOD, and the public and private sectors."