Triumph for Singapore Flyers
Published: 2 May 2014
Students with University of Glasgow Singapore, in partnership with Singapore Institute of Technology have triumphed in an extraordinary Amazing Flying Machine competition.
Those old enough might just recall the seminal 1965 British comedy film: “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines”. Now the University of Glasgow Singapore (UGS) has offered up its own aeronautical heroes!
Every year Singapore stages an Amazing Flying Machine competition, one of the largest such contests in the world. It is open to “anyone who wants to reach for the sky”. The organisers want contestants to demonstrate engineering brilliance, creativity and genius at problem solving. Sponsors include the country’s defence research and development organisation, the national airforce and Microsoft. Partners include a host of higher education establishments and even the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
The University of Glasgow Singapore, in partnership with Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT-UGS) entered for the second year running and is celebrating TWO winning teams. Our students triumphed in the D1 (Semi-autonomous rotary wing aircraft) and E (Open) categories...a 100% success rate for UGS and the Singapore Institute of Technology.
Team Black Aces triumphed in the category for semi-autonomous rotary wing aircraft. The team included first and second aero students Vishal Vaswani, Kalenjit Singh Tara, Loh Yew Khoon Samuel and Benson Tan. The Black Aces machine was a futuristic four-rotor aircraft capable of flying semi-autonomously and performing acrobatics.
The suitably Scottish sounding team ‘Hogmanayers’ were the open category winners comprising first year aero students: Selvaraj Pichamuthu, Lim Wei Liang, Francis Xavier Erickinson and Siyuan Dai. The Hogmanayers team entry was a tri-copter also capable of flying semi-autonomously and performing mid-air stunts.
The team manager was Dr. Sutthiphong "Spot" Srigrarom, Associate Professor, Aerospace Systems, University of Glasgow Singapore. He said: “This is a fantastic achievement given this was only our second outing in this very big and very prestigious competition!
“Although much progress has been made in the field of quad-rotor UAVs, it is still a great challenge to build a quad-rotor capable of fully autonomous flight. In order to be successful in selecting the appropriate control algorithms it is essential to have a complete understanding of quad-rotor flight dynamics. We are very proud of our successful students.”
First published: 2 May 2014
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