VFS Announces “Request for Proposal For 2024/25 Student Drone Competition”

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) announced this week, its Design-Build-Ver­ti­cal Flight (DBVF) 2024–2025 Stu­dent Com­pe­ti­tion Request for Pro­pos­al (RFP) is now online at ly, reports a press release.

This 5th Annu­al DBVF event offers prizes totalling $USD5,000. It chal­lenges “stu­dent teams to design, build and fly a remote-con­trolled/au­tonomous eVTOL air­craft, specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to address the demands of wild­fire response,” explains the release. 

The dead­line to sub­mit a ‘Let­ter of Intent to Com­pete’ is Octo­ber 30th. Those teams who meet all require­ments to pro­ceed will make their final pre­sen­ta­tions dur­ing the week of March 17th, 2025, fol­lowed by them com­pet­ing in the fly-off dur­ing April 8th to 11th. This will be host­ed at the SURVICE Engi­neer­ing Applied Tech­nol­o­gy Oper­a­tion (ATO) facil­i­ty in Churchville, Mary­land.

The release con­tin­ues, “Wild­fires present an increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant threat to ecosys­tems, com­mu­ni­ties and infra­struc­ture world­wide. Drones, with their ver­sa­til­i­ty and rapid deploy­ment capa­bil­i­ties, have emerged as essen­tial tools in com­bat­ing such nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. They can pro­vide real-time sur­veil­lance, assess fire bound­aries and even deliv­er pay­loads like fire retar­dants or res­cue sup­plies in hard-to-reach areas.”

Adithya Ramaswa­mi

It con­tin­ues, “By offer­ing aer­i­al per­spec­tives and pre­cise oper­a­tions, drones help to enhance the effec­tive­ness of fire­fight­ing efforts while reduc­ing risks to human respon­ders on the ground. In this com­pe­ti­tion, stu­dents are tasked with devel­op­ing an eVTOL air­craft designed for wild­fire mis­sions, focus­ing on speed, maneu­ver­abil­i­ty, autonomous oper­a­tion and pre­ci­sion in pay­load deliv­ery, all crit­i­cal fac­tors in real-world wild­fire man­age­ment.”

Adithya Ramaswa­mi, Chair of the DBVF Stu­dent Com­pe­ti­tion, remarked, “This year we focus on engi­neer­ing to address real-world appli­ca­tions. Stu­dents will have to think through many design con­sid­er­a­tions and tech­ni­cal deci­sions as they work to opti­mise their air­craft.” 

He con­tin­ued, “The chal­lenges faced will not only strength­en their skills as engi­neers and inno­va­tors, but also pro­vide invalu­able hands-on expe­ri­ences that will serve them through­out their future careers.”

The annu­al com­pe­ti­tion is designed to devel­op prac­ti­cal skills and famil­iari­sa­tion with eVTOL and advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) tech­nol­o­gy at the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent lev­el and pre­pare the next gen­er­a­tion of engi­neers and lead­ers to push the lim­its of this excit­ing tech­nol­o­gy into the future.

Last year’s win­ners of the fourth annu­al Design-Build-Ver­ti­cal Flight (DBVF) Com­pe­ti­tion was won by Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty. The com­pe­ti­tion required the teams to com­plete sev­er­al deliv­er­ables through­out the year, includ­ing a final tech­ni­cal report, an on-site team pre­sen­ta­tion, a man­u­al­ly pilot­ed flight per­for­mance course, and a ful­ly autonomous flight course. 

Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty Win­ning Team 2024 (Cred­it: Tori Arcile­si)

For more infor­ma­tion

(Top image: VFS Win­ning 2024 eVTOL Entrant — Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty)

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