Congratulations to UAS & Woods!
UAS & Woods was selected as the winner from an impressive pool of local innovators, and was awarded a $30,000 contract with the Christchurch City Council to trial and validate their solution, which will deliver radical improvements to the way the organisation captures aerial imagery.
UAS & Woods developed innovative, smart mapping pods that can be rapidly deployed on a range of aircraft to gather fast aerial mapping data in a more sustainable way.
Why are we running the challenge?
Expert support and financial resources
The Aerospace Challenge is designed to provide expert support and financial resources to enterprising teams, with aims to improve the New Zealand aerospace industry by revolutionising aerial imagery technology.
Aerial imagery technology
Aerial imagery is important for decision-making in cities and regions, particularly for 3D modelling and monitoring air pollution and water levels. Aerial imagery collection is especially important in areas where natural disasters are prevalent and the global changing climate is causing extreme weather conditions.
A more efficient process
The current aerial imagery process is slow and costly, with turnaround time between capture and delivery about 6-9 months, and weather conditions also causing delays and additional costs. An innovative solution could reduce or eliminate these problems, and the Aerospace Challenge aims to advance the development of these innovations.
What are our goals?
- Identify new innovations in the aerospace sector that have the potential to improve aerial imagery capture
- Seed and develop a strong pipeline of innovation to support a growing aerospace sector
- Create partnerships and connections in the local aerospace community
- Develop four new products through the Challenge, with wrap around support
What are we looking for?
We are looking for innovative novel solutions to aerial imagery capture, which must:
- Revolutionise aerial imagery capture – hardware and software
- Deliver radical improvement in delivery time, quality and resolution in aerial imagery
- Achieve lower process costs
- Provide open data available to public
- Be an environmentally sustainable solution
- Produce a prototype able to be optimized within challenge time frame
In addition, solutions should:
- Utilise any vehicle technology capable of taking aerial imagery
- Be Part 101 certified
It would be advantageous if your solution meets the following:
- A commercially viable time to mobilise & deliver
- Retains quality (e.g. pixels, cloud free, sun angle etc etc)
- Achieves LINZ Lidar Standard
- Includes obliques, and the rest of the wish list
- Freedom to operate
- Additional uses for data that is collected
Who should enter?
We welcome applications from anyone with an innovative solution to revolutionise aerial imagery capture. You could be a:
- Tertiary student
- Crown Research Institute
- Researcher
- Start-up
- Post revenue start-up
- Medium to large enterprise business
Where you don’t meet all the above, we would encourage a partnership approach (must have a lead organisation). We are happy to assist you with partnership development if needed.
What’s on offer?
In order to develop, support and enable multiple solutions which could revolutionise aerial imagery capture, we will be awarding the following:
- Four $10k grants to the first round finalists*
- One $30k contract with the Christchurch City Council to the winning solution, which best addresses the problem criteria
*These grants have been sponsored by ChristchurchNZ, KiwiNet & the University of Canterbury.
Sponsors
