Lockheed Martin representatives with Aviation High Airborne Delivery Challenge team in 2012

Lockheed Martin has been announced today as a sponsor for the 2016 UAV Challenge, furthering their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) support for the next generation of innovators. The UAV Challenge is a global competition that aims to inspire and harness the ingenuity and passion of enthusiasts, high-school and university students from around the world to develop novel and cost-effective solutions to real-world problems.

UAV Challenge co-founder Professor Jonathan Roberts, a QUT robotics expert with the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation, welcomed Lockheed Martin’s involvement.

“Lockheed Martin has more than 100 years of experience in developing exciting new aircraft, and to have them on board as a platinum sponsor of the UAV Challenge is fantastic,” Professor Roberts said.

“The UAV Challenge was created to inspire and educate young people in STEM for real world applications such as search and rescue and medical delivery.”

Lockheed Martin Australia & New Zealand Chief Executive, Raydon Gates, said the event provides Australian students with a real-world opportunity to explore the possibilities of where a STEM career could lead them.

“Our future success as an advanced technology innovator depends on the constant supply of highly trained, highly motivated and highly capable technical talent. By supporting events like the UAV Challenge we are helping to inspire the next generation to pursue STEM careers by showing today’s students how exciting and rewarding these jobs can be,” Mr Gates said.

The UAV Challenge runs as a series of events over a two-year cycle, and is open to high school students, universities and enthusiasts from around the world.

The 2016 events comprise:

The Airborne Delivery Challenge (September 20-22, 2016), involving high-school students responding to a hypothetical emergency situation that necessitates their delivering a life-saving medicine to @Outback_Joe, and

The Medical Express Challenge (September 27-30, 2016), where entrants (enthusiasts and university students) must retrieve a medical sample from a hypothetically stranded farmer (@Outback_Joe) who’s been cut off by flood waters and urgently needs some medical analysis to be conducted.

With the recent Deliverable 2 decisions for the Medical Express Challenge, there are 22 teams who have received a “Go” decision and continue to the Deliverable 3 checkpoint. These teams come from the following countries, epitomising the international reach of the UAV Challenge competition: Australia (10), India (3) , USA (2), Poland (2) , Singapore (1), The Netherlands (1) , Canada (1) , Thailand (1) and France (1).

About Lockheed Martin Australia

Headquartered in Canberra, Lockheed Martin Australia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation. The company employs more than 1,000 people in Australia and New Zealand working on a wide range of major programmes spanning the aerospace, defence and civil sectors.

About the UAV Challenge

The UAV Challenge is a global UAV competition that is co-organised by QUT|ARCAA and DATA61|CSIRO. In its tenth year of running, the competition has seen 355 teams compete, with more than 2000 team members in that time. It has greatly influenced the development of three of the most widely used low-cost autopilots (APM:Plane, PX4 and Paparazzi), and encouraged the development and commercialization of components such as the RFD900 communications modem and the Millswood Engineering failsafe flight termination device.

Media contacts

• Michelle Scully, Lockheed Martin Communications +61-448-032-387
• Rose Trapnell, QUT Media Team Leader +61-7-3138-2361 or +61-407-585-901