“Penn Aerial Robotics Club celebrates summer win, looks ahead to next year” in the Daily Pennsylvanian
By Mark Rook
Posted September 29, 2016
“This year, Penn’s Aerial Robotics Club swept the competition at the International Aerial Robotics Competition in Atlanta by winning the best technical paper, beating out the likes of teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology and international universities.
Penn’s quad-copter also led the field by being the only robot in the competition to attempt fully autonomous flight.
The club kicked off its third year in style. Wharton and Engineering senior and president of the Aerial Robotics Club Lukas Vacek said that their mission is to “engage mainly undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania with the design and building of aerial robots, UAVs, and other autonomous types of robots.”
Currently, the club participates in four annual competitions, constructing flying robots capable of completing different tasks, from transporting various objects between locations to guiding robots on the ground to a target. There are approximately 25 members in the club, who are split into teams of designing, programming, and building quad-copters and other machines for each competition.
Despite being comprised of mostly undergraduate engineering students, the Aerial Robotics Club does have students in the College of Arts and Sciences , along with a few graduate students. The club recently added business and marketing departments to garner funding and sponsorships to continue its development. This has opened up opportunities in the club for students who aren’t from physics or computer science backgrounds.”