Invite to Indoor Autonomous Fixed-Wing Drone Pylon Racing Competition, 11/17

We are reaching out to announce our Indoor Autonomous Fixed-Wing Drone Pylon Racing Competition hosted by the Purdue Center on Artificial Intelligence for Digital, Autonomous, and Augmented Aviation (AIDA³), Purdue UAS Research and Test Facility (PURT), and Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC). This hands-on competition challenges teams to design a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) solution to guide a fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) around a pylon course, first through a digital twin simulation; then next, we will invite finalists to perform hardware flight testing at PURT. Follow this link to learn more and sign up for the challenge:   https://pylon-racing.geddes.rcac.purdue.edu/.

With the ongoing advancement in UAV capabilities, particularly as regulators open pathways for beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations, many are focusing on the extended range and efficiency benefits of fixed-wing UAVs. At the same time, improved test environments and higher expectations for safe and robust GNC architectures are accelerating design and evaluation across aerial robotics and UAV testing.

We would like to invite you, your students, and your colleagues to participate in our challenge! Students from all colleges are invited to participate. It offers them a great opportunity to apply the knowledge learned in their class to a real-world robotics challenge. Besides cash prizes, there are numerous benefits for your students to learn and explore experimentation, digital twin simulation involvement, and flight testing.

This competition targets participants with a robotics and control background (both beginner and intermediate), working with Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) and GNC aspects of fixed-wing vehicles. Students should register now to save a spot in the competition and warm up using one of our given digital twin simulators: RCAC Geddes platform, The Construct Sim, or a local setup of the simulation. 

 

Key Dates:

Event	Date/Time (ET)
Competition Announcement and Launch	Oct 24, 2025
Registration Opens (You can start using the simulator)	Oct 31, 2025, 11:59 pm
Info Session #1	Oct 31, 2025, 1:30 pm
Competition starts (when we start releasing scores on the leaderboard)	Nov 17, 2025, 11:59 pm
Info Session #2	Nov 21, 2025, 1:30 pm
Phase 1: Virtual Submission Deadline (only last submission counts)	Dec 01, 2025, 11:59 pm
Announce Finalist	Dec 02, 2025, 11:59 pm
Phase 2: In-person competition	Dec 06, 2025, 10:00 am

 

We are hosting an Info Session #1 ON Oct 31, 2025, at 1:30 pm. Please RSVP to join: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/e906a882-ccb1-456f-ad3b-e6b204d3f1c5@4130bd39-7c53-419c-b1e5-8758d6d63f21 

Follow link to learn more and sign up for the challenge:   https://pylon-racing.geddes.rcac.purdue.edu/