The AUVSI Undergraduate Student UAS Competition, an international competition for colleges and universities, requires each participating team to submit a journal paper, conduct an oral presentation, and demonstrate the flight capabilities of the team’s UAS.

The flight portion of the competition is composed of four mission phases: takeoff, waypoint navigation, area search, and landing. The first phase, takeoff, may be manual or autonomous, but the flight portion of the competition must be fully autonomous. After takeoff, the UAS must then climb to a cruise altitude between 100ft and 750ft MSL.

The waypoint navigation phase consists of flying over waypoints provided at competition while remaining inside the given search area. During the third phase, area search, teams use their UAS surveillance capabilities to locate targets and identify the shape, background color, orientation, alphanumeric, and alphanumeric color of each target. The team must identify a minimum of two of these target parameters. In addition to the target parameters, teams must also identify the location of the target via GPS coordinates.

The last phase, landing, may occur either under manual or autonomous control. In order to obtain maximum credit, the team must complete all four phases of the mission in less than forty minutes.