
Above: CU Boulder RAAVEN (Robust Autonomous Airborne Vehicle - Endurant and Nimble) uncrewed aerial vehicle flying over a wind farm.
Headline Photo: Showcasing a large uncrewed aerial vehicle east of Boulder.
The University of Colorado Boulder has been named 1st place winner in Academic Research category of the XCELLENCE Awards by the Association for Uncrewed Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI).
CU Boulder was selected from a pool of applicants for their work in uncrewed systems technology. Winners were publicly congratulated during the XCELLENCE awards ceremony during AUVSI XPONENTIAL on May 9.
CU Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV), and Integrated Remote and In Situ Sensing Program (IRISS) have led small uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS) research for more than 20 years. With increasingly autonomous operations, this research supports applications from military communications to severe convective storms over the Great Plains to ocean-atmosphere interactions in the Arctic and the tropics.
“On behalf of my colleagues in the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles, the Integrated Remote and In Situ Sensing Program, and our collaborators around the world, I thank AUVSI for recognizing our UAS research with the 2023 XCELLENCE Award for Academic Research. We look forward to this recognition encouraging even more partnerships and collaborations," said Brian Argrow, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and director of IRISS.
Major achievements from CU Boulder UAS programs include:
Other sUAS campaigns include the North Slope of Alaska, Antarctica, Peru, Japan, and Norway.
The AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards honor innovators with a demonstrated commitment to advancing autonomy, leading, and promoting safe adoption of uncrewed systems and developing programs that use these technologies to save lives and improve the human condition.
For more information about AUVSI visit AUVSI.org. For more information about the AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards and XPONENTIAL 2023, visit xponential.org.