“Gambit” Pays Off in UMD Team’s Search-and-Rescue Competition Win

Maryland’s team did it for $5,000, compared to industry models costing over $50,000, Paley said.

Beyond cost, the team wanted to take first responders’ needs into
consideration in its design. Through Maryland’s I-Corps Program, an
NSF-funded initiative that offers entrepreneurial training, team members
were able to interview EMTs, police officers and firefighters.

“We learned that reliability was one of the top features,” said
Qingwen Wei, a senior in aerospace engineering and the team’s design
lead and pilot, “which is also why we dedicated so many hours to testing
our drone, to find all of the bugs and work out any issues.”

The team took the advice to heart, and by competition time could
deploy Gambit into action in under two minutes, while other competitors
took much longer. In search and rescue, where minutes lost can cost
lives, rapid deployment is critical.

“Our design was also very safe because all of our wires and the
rotors were enclosed,” Wei said “So, if we hit an obstacle, the drone
would bounce off, instead of getting entangled or getting shut off.”

The AMAV Team also won the 2021 NIST UAS FastFind Challenge 3.1,
which required it to find multiple missing persons in more than 70 acres
of forest. Looking ahead, the student engineers are exploring options
for improving and commercializing Gambit, based on interest from the
competition’s sponsors and attendees. Although the market for drones is
saturated at the moment, Gambit’s combination of capability and cost
make it one-of-a-kind, Paley said.

In the meantime, however, the NIST 2023 challenge was announced, and the team is already thinking about its next entry.