Teams from the MEng Aerospace Engineering degree programme at Queen’s University in Belfast were recently tasked with designing and building — from scratch — an ‘autonomously controlled aircraft’ (drone) that could deliver two bottles of water and a medical kit ‘to disaster victims’ using its own in-flight system.

The drones were put through their paces during test flights in County Antrim, after which the two top teams competed last weekend (as Machinery Market went to press) with other universities from throughout the UK and Europe in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ UAS Challenge, held in Wales.

Joe Butterfield, a lecturer from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University (www.qub.ac.uk), who has been working closely with the students, said: “This project emphasises the need for our engineers to be multi-disciplinary designers.

"Drones and drone design are topical issues, with a proliferation of systems for wide-ranging applications.

"Our students will graduate from Queen’s not only with a good grounding in the basic principles behind aircraft design but also a wealth of knowledge when it comes to drone design.”

He went on to say that demand and applications for unmanned air systems has grown at an exponential rate in recent years, which means there are significant market opportunities for drone manufacturers and supply chain companies providing specialised equipment that drones can carry.

Mr Butterfield concluded: “Applications include accident reporting, crop monitoring, infrastructure inspection, mapping and surveying, and humanitarian relief.

“Meanwhile, companies like Amazon are planning for automated delivery systems and Rolls-Royce is investigating autonomous air taxi systems.”