Aerospace Robotics Competition ARC

Registration DUE December 13, 2024*

2024-25 ARC Regional Competition Rulebook Rev C
Rulebook Feedback Form
2024-25 Field Kit Assembly Guide Rev B
Cubic Conundrum Cube Corner File
Safety and FAA Compliance Guide (Coming soon!)
Kit Order Form
Registration
Recommended Supplies
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This fee will offset the costs associated with running the regions (food, renting space, insurance, prize money, field pieces, etc.).

The Aerospace Robotics Competition:

Hands-on flying of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Developing knowledge of unmanned and autonomous systems
Learning about aerospace engineering principles

By definition, autonomy is acting independently, and ARC allows high school students to create UAVs that do just that. Students will program a UAV to act independently of any human pilot. Aspects of the mission will change each year to encompass new challenges, yet still follow the three pillars of the competition. The UAV for this competition will be a quadcopter, which uses four electric motors with propellers to generate lift. The three pillars of the competition are applied via the following competition portions, each with a corresponding scoring criterion:

Moving forward, ARC will continue to be composed of three primary competition portions:

Autonomous Flight
The emphasis of the competition will be placed on the virtual autonomous flight tasks. The Autonomous round requires extensive programming by the students. This poses a great challenge for the teams, but the applied programming principles are directly correlated to skills highly sought after within the aerospace industry.
Semi-Autonomous Flight
The Semi-Autonomous flight round will be head-to-head student-piloted flight. This provides excitement for students competing and spectators as it is in the moment competition and individual controlled, instead of being completely pre-programmed like Autonomous. Semi-Autonomous does require a degree of programming to maintain successful flight, but the programming required is not to the extent of the Autonomous portion.
Technical Communication
Teams will gain experience in industry standard technical communication by presenting their vehicle, team, analysis, and competition plan to a panel of judges. Teams will be judged both on presentation content and presentation style. Creativity is encouraged in their design of the UAV and plan for completing the flight missions; this is where teams can showcase their creativity and their work.