Ondokuz Mayıs University (OMU) Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics students returned from the Direct Lift Unmanned Aerial Vehicles competition with an award.

Held for the first time this year by Middle East Technical University and sponsored by Boeing, the “Team Hawk” won the third place in the General Category with their VTOL vehicle named “Atlas” in the “Direct Lift Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Competition” under the counseling of OMU Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics Department of Material Sciences Engineering faculty member Assoc. Prof. Özgür Demircan.

Eleven teams from 6 universities participated in the competition held at the Ankara Campus of Middle East Technical University. Ondokuz Mayıs University was represented by the Hawk tam consisting of students Erol Çelebi, Muhammet Emin Fırat and Enes Yamanoğlu from Faculty of Engineering; Ergun Umut Kılınç and Selahattin Selek from Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and Abdülvahit Işık from the Faculty of Medicine. The unmanned aerial vehicle designed by the team was designed to aid search and rescue operations in emergency states such as accidents, disasters and/or floods.

The competition was held to set forth that UAV’s could be developed for civil uses in order to aid people during emergency states such as fire or accidents. The competition also tested the UAV’s orderly load dropping abilities and autonomous flight, flight endurance and image processing capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles.