U of T's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle team wins largest student drone competition in Canada - Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

May 15, 2017 – The University of Toronto Aerospace Team’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) team recently came in first place at the Unmanned Systems Canada Student Competition, the largest student UAV/drone competition in Canada.

The annual competition promotes and develops Canadian expertise, innovation and experience in unmanned systems technologies at the university and college levels. This year’s wildlife monitoring scenario tasked the teams to census and locate nests of three different types of geese in the remote Canadian wilderness. This year’s challenge required an Unmanned Aerial System to extract eggs from the nests to allow wildlife biologists to test the eggs for levels of pesticides.

The team consisted of:

Team Captain: Erik Chau (Mech 1T6 + PEY)
Chief Engineer: Oliver Wu (ECE 1T7 + PEY)
Safety Pilot: Rikky Duivenvoorden (UTIAS MASc 1T6)
Payload Lead: Winston Liu (EngSci 1T7 + PEY)
Airframe Lead: Kevin Xu (ECE 1T9)
Multirotor Lead: Andrew Ilersich (EngSci 1T8 + PEY)
Avionics Lead: Kevin Dong (EngSci 1T8 + PEY(
Mechanical Lead: Nicholas Guglielmin (Mech 1T7 + PEY)
Airframe Team: Spencer Zhao (Eng Sci 2T0)
Lu Chen (IndE 1T8 + PEY)
Talha Javed (Mech 1T9)
Ishaq Khan (Mech 1T9)

Traditional Land Acknowledgement

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.