IEEE AESS Lone Star Section Joint Chapter Halloween Drone Competition
The Lone Star Section’s Joint AESS/SMC/SYSC Chapter held their annual Halloween Drone Competition 29 October hosted at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. This STEM outreach event focused primarily on high school students with an interest in drone technologies. The event was divided into four major components: a drone competition, drone exhibitions, vendor and student organization booth, and a costume contest. The event began with a Jurassic Park-themed opening ceremony as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1- IEEE LSS AESS Drone Committee kicks off the competition with a lively introduction to drone technologies. From left to right: Garrett Hall, Sarana Tse, Nicole Webb, Jovany Avila, and Johnathan Votion.
For the main drone competition, teams of students manually piloted Tello drones through a Halloween-themed graveyard to find skeletons hidden amongst the tombstones using the Tello’s camera. The field was 30 feet by 30 feet and encased in bird netting as seen in Figure 2. A secondary objective of popping balloons with spooky ghost faces was achieved by affixing a Q-Tip dosed in limonene solvent to the drone. Upon touching the balloons with the limonene Q-Tips, a chemical reaction would dissolve the balloon thus popping them. The final objective was to traverse the course and land on a designated pad within the 2.5-minute time limit. There was a total of 24 teams who competed from 10 different local San Antonio high schools with the event totaling over 150 participants. The competition concluded with two university teams from St. Mary’s University and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) participating in an autonomous competition with similar objectives to the manually piloted competition. St. Mary’s University’s Drone Lab Engineer Technician Nicole Webb provided all necessary drone expertise and equipment for the main competition.
Figure 2 – A student retrieves a fallen drone from the main cage.
In addition to the main competition, there were exhibition cages where students could practice flying through hula-hoops located at various heights as shown in Figure 3. Since many of the students were unfamiliar with flying drones, this was a chance for them to hone their piloting skills before participating in the main competition. Students were also shown a variety of computer vision algorithms being ran in real-time on a television monitor while they flew their drones. The exhibition demos were supported by Dr. Johnathan Votion from UTSA along with UTSA students.
Figure 3 – UTSA students teach high school students the basics of drone flight.
Students had a chance to interact with local universities' student organizations and programs. These organizations included The University of the Incarnate Word’s Girls in Engineering, Math, and Science (GEMS) program where high school students learn about how research is performed, UTSA’s IEEE Student Chapter and Robotic Automation Society where students learned more about what university life is like for engineers, and REM Technologies who introduced students to the process of acquiring FAA certification for the commercial operation of drones.
Figure 4 – UTSA’s IEEE Student Chapter promoting academic engineering pathways to prospective students.
During the competition and exhibitions, a costume contest was held as seen in Figure 5 and Figure 6. Judges from St. Mary’s University engineering faculty voted on best look-alike-costume, best team costume, and funniest costume. Later in the afternoon, Sarana Tse from St. Mary’s Esports Team organized a small Smash Brothers tournament for the students. The event concluded with an announcement of the winners for the drone and costume contest followed by a closing ceremony. This event was proudly sponsored at the platinum level by The Dee Howard Foundation, IEEE AESS, St. Mary’s University, Southwest Research Institute, and The University of Texas at San Antonio. There are plans to hold next year’s competition at The University of the Incarnate Word. For any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to the current IEEE LSS AESS/SMC/SYSC and Drone Committee Chair Garrett Hall at (Click to show email).
Figure 5 – Team Gadget Grannies posing outside of main event cage before competing in the costume contest.
Figure 6 – The University of the Incarnate Word’s high school team from the Girls in Engineering, Math, and Science (GEMS) Program, the geM&M’s, participating in the costume contest.