UTA Student Team Scores Big Again in National AUV Competition
Rolando Castilleja, Amen Omoragbon, Eric
Pianori, Dr. Atilla Dogan, Dr. Arthur Alexander
Reyes, and James Gilligan
A team of engineering students from the University of Texas at Arlington won third place
in the 2006 national AUVSI Student Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Competition. A UTA team won first place
in the national student competition last year. Department of Computer Science and
Engineering faculty member Dr. Arthur Reyes, a co-director of UTA's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Laboratory and a team advisor for the competition, praised the team for their hard work and
high skills that led to their success.
The competition was held at the Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center in Maryland and was
sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the U. S. Navy
Program Executive Office for Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation.
Dr. Arthur
Reyes
In addition to winning third place in the 2006 overall competition, the UTA team also won
third place in mission performance and fifth place in oral presentation. Teams from the
University of Manitoba and Brigham Young University won first and second place in the
competition, which draws teams from America's top engineering schools, including MIT,
Cornell and others.
Students on the team were mechanical and aerospace students junior
Venko Damianov, degreed
undergraduate
Eric Pianori, junior
Amen Omoragbon, senior
Rolando Castilleja,
senior
James Gilligan and senior
Ryan Slater.
Other advisors included CSE Faculty Associate
Dr. Michael Youngblood, Industrial & Manufacturing
Systems Engineering Associate Professor
Brian Huff, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
assistant professors
Atilla Dogan and
Kamesh Subbarao.
The students and faculty advisors are members of the Autonomous Vehicles Laboratory and
were supported by Bell Helicopter Textron, the College of
Engineering, MicroPilot Inc., Dennis Lee Johnston, Multiplex Inc., Jay Francis, and the
Fort Worth Thunderbirds Radio Control Club.
