Outback Joe is at his property in remote Queensland, Australia and has been feeling unwell. He has had a remote consultation with his doctor using video conferencing, and his doctor has requested some blood tests be done as soon as possible. Joe is well prepared, has a home sample taking kit, and has taken his blood sample. The challenge is now to get the blood sample to the lab. Joe’s property is very remote and to make matters worse, it has been cut off by floodwaters.

Teams were invited to attempt to retrieve a blood sample from the remote Outback Joe and return it to base where medical staff would be waiting to analyse it. Teams were encouraged to develop systems that could carry out the mission in a fully autonomous manner using Type 2 Autonomy.

An example layout for a 2018 Medical Express Challenge mission. Note that this figure is an example only.

Changes from 2016 

The 2018 Medical Express Challenge was designed to extend the capability of teams in the area of autonomy. The UAV Challenge Technical Committee believe that the level of autonomy of UAVs must increase in order to see them used more regularly to save lives. Additional cash prizes were created for demonstration of Type 2 Autonomy and an ability to re-plan a mission in real-time and potentially avoid other airspace users (known as the Extension Autonomy Challenge).

Deliverables

Entrants were required to submit a short technical report (known as Deliverable 1) that described the proposed system design and safety considerations. Later a more detailed technical report was required (Deliverable 2) that outlined a team’s design approach, methodology for remote landing, and operational and safety procedures along with a flight demonstration video was submitted.  Finally an Autonomous Flight Record that documented a minimum of five hours of autonomous flight had to be provided along with a Safety Case document (Deliverable 3).

Scoring

Points were be awarded based on the mission performance including the accuracy of the remote landing, technical documentation, and the team’s answers to questions from the judges prior to the mission.

The blood vial successfully retrieved from Canberra UAV’s Quadplane in 2016.

The Prize

The team to achieve the highest points total and have also completed the mission, and after the competition is complete, would be declared the winner and would receive AUD$ 25,000. However, no teams achieved this in 2018, but two came close.

If the winning team had completed the mission using Type 2 Autonomy then they would have received a bonus of AUD$25,000.

If the winning team had also completed the mission containing Dynamic No Fly Zones they would have received an additional bonus of AUD$25,000.