Competitions
The goal of both the 2018 and 2019 NSF CPS Challenges was to use a quadrotor aircraft with downward facing cameras, and possibly other sensors, to search an area for a specific object, retrieve that object, drop it off at a different location, and then return to land at the takeoff point. The challenges were designed for undergraduate teams participating in a capstone project course. Teams were expected to have a mentor who is a graduate student, or a faculty member that can provide direction and suggest technical approaches. All solutions involved both software and hardware. The final challenges were held in Tucson, AZ in the Spring of 2018 & 2019 (travel support was provided to invited finalists).
The 2017 CPS Challenge was a Spring 2017 student competition focused on model-based design for a self-driving car.
The challenge aimed to broaden participation in Cyber-Physical Systems, and was run in the spirit of the DARPA Robotics Challenge as a competition in four phases. The Challenge provided an exciting opportunity for students to build a component that controls and runs on a real self-driving car--the University of Arizona's CAT Vehicle.
The 2016 CPS Challenge provided engineering students the opportunity to validate their analytic studies through a real-world vehicle design and verification experience. Student teams architected, designed, fabricated, predicted, and demonstrated the flying and maneuvering capabilities of an unmanned, electric and/or non-electric powered, radio controlled or autonomous vehicle with reliable pickup/dropoff of payload, practical and affordable manufacturing requirements, and high overall vehicle performance.