MathWorks Mini Drone Competition IROS 2018 was held 3rd and 4th October 2018 in Madrid, Spain as a part of IEEE/RSJ IROS 2018 conference. The competition consisted with tow rounds. More than 30 teams were registered for the round 1 of the competition. In round 1, the teams had to develop a simulation model for navigating a Parrot Mamba minidrone using Matlab/Simulink. After evaluating the simulation models, the best 4 teams were selected for the final round held in IROS 2018 conference. In the final round, the simulation models had to be deployed to the real hardware. The teams needed to use their programming and modeling skill to complete a series of engineering tasks using the MathWorks provided mini-drone in the fastest time to win.
Team Bathkoora from University of Moratuwa has secured 2nd place in this competition and was awarded with a cash prize of 1500 USD. Viraj Muthugala, Bhagya Samarakoon from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Chamika Perera, Isuru Ruhunage from Department of Mechanical Engineering were the team members. A team from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA won the 1st place and a team from Universidad Pontificia Comillas (ICAI), Spain secured the 3rd place who was awarded with 2000 USD and 1000 USD respectively.
