PROVO — Brigham Young University students are building small unmanned surveillance planes that could one day be used on the battlefield, in search-and-rescue operations or to track forest fires.
BYU professors Randy Beard, left, and Tim McClain, right, in tie, and students show off one of their 3-pound surveillance planes. A video of the planes' daring maneuvers took the grand prize at the Infotech@Aerospace Video Competition, beating out several defense contractors. "We pushed the envelope," McClain says.
Last month, a five-minute video featuring the planes, which only weigh 3 pounds and have a wingspan of under 5 feet, won a national competition sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, beating out engineering teams from Boeing, NASA and Lockheed Martin, as well as teams from several universities, including Stanford and Georgia Tech .