What was on board.
Airframe
- Holybro X650 V2 carbon fibre frame
- Quadrotor configuration
- Disassembles into a travel-size suitcase
Propulsion
- T-Motor MN4014 400 KV (×4)
- 30 A, 900 W, 3.3 kg thrust each
- T-Motor 17×5.8 carbon fibre propellers, 432 mm
- T-Motor AIR 40A 2-6S (×4), 621 Hz
Power System
- Tattu 22000 mAh 6S1P LiPo
- Holybro PM02D, 2S-12S
- 5 V power brick, DC-DC to 12 V at 5 A
- Four branches: ESCs, flight controller, winch, onboard computer
Flight Controller
- Holybro Pixhawk 6X v2A (STM32H753)
- Cascaded P-PID with EKF state estimation
Navigation System
- Holybro M9N GPS with IST8310 compass
- Stereo-visual SLAM for drift correction, no RTK
- Accelerometer, magnetometer and barometer on the Pixhawk
Onboard Computer
- NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 16 GB
- 100 TOPS, 1024-core Ampere GPU
- 128 GB SSD, LPDDR5
Vision System
- Stereolabs ZED 2i with polariser, 4 mm lens
- YOLOv8 detection
- Custom mapping algorithm
Obstacle Avoidance
- LDRobot LD-06, 360° TOF
- 12 m range, 4500 points per second
- PX4 Local Planner on a 3D cost map
Wireless Communications
- Holybro SiK Telemetry Radio V3, 433 MHz
- RadioMaster TX16S Mark II, ELRS, 2 km
- Holybro RP1 ELRS Nano, 2.4 GHz
- Waveshare SIM7600G-H 4G
- Mission Planner over MAVLink
Winch & Payload
- Waveshare ST3215-HS, 20 kg·cm at 106 RPM
- Waveshare serial bus servo driver board
- 50 mm winch wheel radius
- 34.4 s drop time from 18 m
Software Architecture
- PX4 Autopilot with MAVLink
- MAVROS bridge to the onboard computer
- YOLOv8 on the Jetson Orin NX
- PX4 SITL with Gazebo, eCalc, Fusion 360
What changed from UAV 1.0.
SUAS 2025 asks a different question from RobotX. There is no boat, no manipulator and no deck to land on: one aircraft, one mission clock, and tasks that reward an aircraft which can see, map and deliver on its own. These are the upgrades that answer it.
Stereo depth and an edge GPU
UAV 1.0 detected with OpenCV and TensorFlow on a Raspberry Pi 4B, using a single autofocus camera and an ultrasonic sensor to recover the depth it could not see. UAV 2.0 runs YOLOv8 on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX at 100 TOPS against a ZED 2i stereo pair, so classification and range come from the same sensor at the rate the aircraft actually flies.
Mapping, with no RobotX equivalent
SUAS asks for an imagery map of roughly ten acres, at a resolution and coverage no single frame can reach, handed over inside the mission clock. A custom mapping pipeline runs on the Jetson from the ZED 2i stream, with coverage completeness prioritised over speed, because a map with holes is graded as a map with holes.
Holding position without RTK
There is no RTK correction on this aircraft. Position comes from an M9N with an IST8310 compass, fused with the Pixhawk's accelerometer, magnetometer and barometer through the PX4 EKF, with stereo-visual SLAM carrying the load against GPS drift. Delivery is judged on a radius measured in feet, which makes drift the dominant error term across the whole mission.
Obstacle avoidance, new this generation
An LDRobot LD-06 scans 360 degrees to 12 m at 4,500 points per second into PX4's Local Planner, which builds a local 3D cost map and evaluates candidate trajectories against it. It is not a task on the course. It is what keeps the aircraft available to fly the ones that are.
Lowering a payload instead of dropping it
A delivery counts only if the payload arrives undamaged, and anything released in freefall is not a delivery at all. UAV 2.0 lowers it. A 70 g Waveshare ST3215-HS servo rated at 20 kg·cm drives a 50 mm radius drum, paying the payload down from 18 m in about 34 seconds, then releasing the tether about a metre above the ground so it cannot foul the airframe on climb-out. UAV 1.0 could pick a payload up. This generation can put one down.
Designed to be carried to the competition
The airframe is 7 kg all up, and the X650 V2 breaks down into travel-size suitcases and back to flight-ready, motors and control surfaces live, inside the window the competition allows a four-person crew. For a team flying from Singapore to Maryland that is a logistics constraint before it is a design one.