The UMass UAV Team

The UMass Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Team is a student competition team competing in the 2021 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Design, Build, Fly (DBF) International Competition. We're a new team composed of six seniors and seven underclassmen who are dedicated to increasing hands-on experiences particularly focusing on aerospace engineering for UMass students. This project introduces aeronautics to UMass Amherst's MIE department and provides a way for students to step into the emerging UAV industry. 

The 2021 DBF Competition consists of four missions where our team will demonstrate our remote control aircraft's flight characteristics. To get a competitive score we must design an aircraft to carry a payload of containers as well as deploy and recover a sensor midflight while optimizing the aeronautical design constraints to achieve maximum speed while minimizing weight. 

The competition takes place in Tucson, AZ in the middle of April. At this time, our team has been accepted to compete, and is eligible to fly our aircraft in the competition. However, we need your help to get to Arizona and take part in the fly-off. 

We are dedicated to successfully competing in this competition and exposing other students and industry representatives to the UMass College of Engineering, and we are extremely grateful for any donations that will help us with our goal.