Oakland University’s Embedded Systems Research Laboratory’s Loon Copter drone dubbed the “Loon Copter” took first place in the 2016 international UAE Drones for Good competition in Dubai this past weekend. The group received a one million dollar grand prize.

The drone project began in 2014. The prototype that was used in the competition is the third generation prototype of the Loon Copter.

The drone was named after the native Michigan duck, the loon, that can fly in the air and dive underwater.

The Loon Copter has four propellers that allow it to move through the air and travel across the surface of water. To submerge, the drone has a pump that moves water into a tank and causes the drone to rotate 90 degrees so that the propellers can move it through the water. When transitioning back to the surface, the pump moves water out of the tank and the drone returns to its upright position. This transition occurs in just a few seconds.

“Being in Michigan with a huge amount of water spaces, the idea came to Professor Rawashdeh’s mind to develop a drone that could fly, float on the surface and dive underwater,” Iyad Mansour, Loon Copter team member, said.

The team is comprised of Dr. Osamah Rawashdeh, Iyad Mansour, Hamzeh Alzubi and Sean Simpson.

Mansour acted as the team’s software engineer that developed the control systems for air and underwater movement. Hamzeh was responsible for all of the hardware components.

One of the team’s main objectives to make the Loon Copter on a budget.

“To make it affordable and widely useable, we picked on-the-shelf products that consisted of a combination of parts from submarines and quadrotors,” Mansour said.

The team also used the University’s 3D printer located in the Engineering Center to create a few special parts.

“Our vehicle is unique, there’s only one of its kind,” Mansour said.

Underwater search and rescue, environmental monitoring, over-water bridge inspection and assessing oil spills are just a few scenarios the team illustrated for their presentation.  There are potentially unlimited applications for this versatile unmanned vehicle.

“This kind of drone opens a door to a new kind of technology and new problems to solve,” Mansour said.

The Loon Copter team started developing their drone well before the UAE Drones for Good competition started.  Once they heard about the competition, though, they felt that it would be a worthwhile challenge to take on.

“The main idea behind the [Drones for Good] competition is to promote the positive applications for drones and the various things they can do to improve people’s lives since they are commonly viewed in a negative light by the public,” said Mansour.

There were over 1,017 entries from over 165 countries all over the world. The Loon Copter team was one of ten teams that was picked to move on to the semi-finals and come to Dubai to present their drone.

Each individual team had a 15-minute presentation and was scored based on three categories.

Top three semi-finalists moved on to the final round where the team took first place overall.

“We are very happy and very proud as a team to win this competition as part of Oakland University,” Mansour said.  “We got to meet people from all over the world from different schools and companies to talk about upcoming technology and everybody was interested in our project.”

The team is celebrating their victory though they do have plans for improving the drone even further.

One of the biggest limitations the drone faces is the limited underwater radio signal range of the drone. They’re exploring different technology such as acoustic modems to improve the range and working on discovering a way to live stream video from underwater.

Unfortunately, the Loon Copter won’t be available to the public anytime soon. For more information on what’s happening with the team, check out their website at sites.google.com/a/oakland.edu/oar/loon-copter.