A record 32 universities took part in the final fly-off of the UAS Challenge (unmanned aircraft system) event, which saw students from the
University of Bath’s Team Bath Drones secure the title of ‘Grand Champions’ during the finals, which were held at the BMFA Buckminster in the UK.
Entrants were not only from the UK but also Estonia, China, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
Team Bath clinched the 2025 win after narrowly beating the reigning champions Beihang University; newcomers from Politecnico di Milano were awarded third place, in what was their competition debut. Other teams receiving awards included University of Twente (the Netherlands), which won the Design award, and the Estonian Aviation Academy, which won the Operational Supportability award.
Having started in 2014 and now in its 11th year, the UAS Challenge is an annual engineering design competition in which undergraduate and postgraduate students at universities around the world must design, build and fly a variety of flight missions using a completely autonomous UAS weighing no more than 10kg.
As the competition ruleset allows for a wide interpretation for the entrants’ UAS design, 2025 saw students fielding a great variety of aircraft. Notable aircraft this year included those that launched with the help of self-designed catapult systems (Beihang University and Heriot-Watt University), and a VTOL ‘tailsitter’ design from the Estonian Aviation Academy. This aircraft managed to complete a successful autonomous flight and payload drop — a first for the competition.
Paul Lloyd, UAS chairman, said: “After a fantastic 10th anniversary last year, with the highest number of teams we’ve ever seen at an event, it is great that the event is still growing, with over 30 teams taking part this year. The standard we have seen this year has been a tremendous step up, with aircraft ready to go from the moment they arrived and flying ‘all the way up to the wire’ on the final day. Everyone should be very proud of their work this year.”