The competition, the second of a three-part international series that kicked off last summer in London in 2024, took place on the Huntsville UAS and Counter-UAS Center of Excellence Test Range.
SAPIENCE seeks to advance the field of autonomous systems by leveraging artificial intelligence for enhanced perception and guidance autonomy in drones. The initiative promotes innovation in search and rescue operations through a series of collaborative competitions, tasking multiple drones with effectively navigating and mapping GPS-denied environments, detecting and delivering aid to victims and performing complex cooperative tasks. The program enhances the capabilities of autonomous systems while potentially saving lives and improving safety in critical situations.
"This event highlights the challenges of real-world scenarios in drone operations," says Dr. Bryan Mesmer, department chair and associate professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (ISEEM) at UAH. "It is one thing to develop a search and rescue drone in a lab when you have control of all the external variables, but as soon as you are in the hot sun of a July afternoon in Northern Alabama, all of those external variables you had control of are left to nature."
The competition brought together 25 students and university professors from UAH; City St. George's, University of London in the United Kingdom; Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, as well as a NATO representative and six international, national and local judges.
"The competition went very well. It was challenging of course due to the heat," Mesmer notes. "The impact of the sun causing glares, the temperature impacting soldered connections, the movement of vehicles in the distance causing issues with your tracking algorithms, etc. The real world is challenging, and the students in this competition met that challenge head-on to make significant movement in the field on autonomous multi-drone technology in search and rescue scenarios. It was an honor to host the event."
"At last year's competition in London, we got to do a lot of knowledge sharing between the teams, which allowed for us to make some great progress in 2025," says Jamie Roberson, UAH SAPIENCE student team lead, who has been on the UAH team since April 2024.
Hailey Hicks, team systems engineer, joined the squad after the first competition in London. "It has been fun to get to see what all goes into creating a functional drone, on both the hardware and software side of things, as well as getting to use some systems engineering skills such as requirements, documentation and timelines," the student says.
"I've had my hand in just about every part of this team," explains UAH student Joseph Schwalb. "I've helped our hardware team build our initial prototypes, the software team build the architecture to run our technology stack and developed the simulation stack necessary to make the transition from software tests to real flight tests practical and realistic."
The third stage of the SAPIENCE project will take place next spring in the Netherlands. The event will involve the drones needing to fly outdoors and indoors, a challenging task, as it combines multiple environments where different sensors are preferred.
UAH is known internationally as a hub for cutting-edge expertise in Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS). The multifaceted UAH Rotorcraft Systems Engineering and Simulation Center (RSESC) focuses on applied research and systems engineering techniques to enhance success for government, industry, commercial and small business partners.
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