(This is a copy of the article from the 1993 GT Alumni Magazine, original article is here)

The SAC athletic field looked as though it might have been prepared for flights of fancy. One group from the Naval Academy had a "neutral bouyancy" craft equipped with vertical thrusters, a weather balloon and a vectored horizontal fan. Other teams had variations of helicopters, and one of the teams from British Columbia had a blimp.

In the third year of competition, there were no overall winners in the 1993 International Aerial Robotics Competition, but an aerial show by a Georgia Tech team demonstrated that robots could soon be flying by their wits.

Georgia Tech team No. 1, which won first place, used two model-sized robotic helicopters that, in combination, accomplished the objectives of autonomous flight, as well as both retrieving and transporting randomly placed objects to a remote location.

"Georgia Tech performed a totally autonomous flight," said Robert C. Michelson, a principal research engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Michelson initiated the competition three years ago when he served as technical chairman of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVS), a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, educational organization. This year Michelson is serving as president of the AUVS. The association offers a $10,000 scholarship prize to the first university team that develops a robot that can fly autonomously, find and pick up randomly placed objects at one location, and transport them to another location.

"The Tech vehicle lifted off autonomously, flew around the arena, and found the pickup ring where it hovered stably in the presence of a wind, and then moved to the center of the arena where it did an autonomous landing," Michelson said. "This showed that the autonomous helicopter could perceive its environment, maintain stability and position in the presence of perturbing influences [wind], and could locate the pick-up ring," he explained.

Because of the weight of the onboard electronics, the flying robot could not lift the team's robotic retriever, explained Michelson. In a separate demonstration the team used a remote-controlled helicopter that was without sensors or instruments, and was devoted to lifting the retrieval robot to show that it operated successfully.

When the remote-controlled helicopter was positioned over the pick-up ring, Michelson said the retrieval device lowered itself "like a spider on a thread." One of the randomly placed spool-like discs was retrieved and transported to the drop-off location. The procedure was repeated.

"Georgia Tech team No. 1 demonstrated parts of the mission separately," Michelson said. "However, no one has completed the entire mission."

An independent team of judges awarded Georgia Tech $6,000, the U.S. Naval Academy second place and a $2,500 prize, and the University of Texas at Arlington third place and $1,500.

Michelson said 25 university teams had qualified for the competition, including three Georgia Tech teams. However, only 11 teams representing seven universities progressed far enough to compete. One of the Tech teams withdrew because of a component failure the night before the competition.

"This competition introduces students to real-world engineering," Michelson said. "And because this competition features autonomous robots operating in unstructured environments, it is the most challenging robotics competition."