The evaForge team is working on a Open Design entry into the DARPA uavForge challenge.  Based in the Bay Area the evaForge entry is based on the innovative QuadShot airframe designed by a team based in Santa Cruz.  The QuadShot is "an aerobatic blend of RC helis and planes" which provides the key capabilities of both vertical takeoff/landing like a helicopter and efficient forward flight like a plane.

The evaForge team is working on the "mission" payload, which includes the hardware and software necessary to stream video, and semi-autonomously navigate.  The payload hardware includes items like a gimbaled camera, lidar range sensor, GPS, and IMU all of which must be integrated both physically and in software into the design to complete the challenge mission.

Due to the nature of the challenge we need people from all disciplines including: mechanical design of the sensors and packaging, software development of on board "smarts" as well as the iOS user interface, hardware development of the various sensor boards and motion control boards, graphical design of the user interface,RC expertise for tweaking the airframe to meet the strenuous mission requirements and fabrication of the various mechanical components such as the camera gimbal.

If you are as infatuated with cool flying things like we are stop by one of our meetups and check it out.

Outline of UAVForge Challenge:

The UAVForge challenge requires a small UAV to travel 2 miles to a target location where it lands of "perches" on a roof within 100ft of the target and observes the target area for up to 3 hours before traveling 2 miles to a new location where it autonomously follows a friendly ground vehicle.  Points are awarded for certain autonomous operations as well as usability.  A more detailed description can be found on the team assembla wiki page here.