Research and Training Program in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) hold great promise for applications as diverse as natural resource monitoring, infrastructure inspection (pipeline, railways), agriculture, mineral exploration, journalism, and search & rescue operations. This is the most vibrant sector of the aerospace industry, growing more quickly than any other segment. It is forecast that the UAV sector will continue to experience strong growth for the next decade, and that, globally, almost US$90 billion will be spent on new vehicles and support systems over that period ($82 billion in the US alone and the creation of 100,000 new jobs). While the majority of the UAV market has historically been dedicated to military and security applications, the bulk of the predicted growth will come from civilian applications. Given Canada's vast geographical landscape (e.g. the Arctic) and natural resources, the Canadian commercial or civil UAV market is expected to grow rapidly. Canada has a long and successful history of leadership in aviation. Several Canadian companies have emerged recently to take leading roles in the growing civilian UAV market, nationally and internationally. Teaming up with five of these strong companies, this proposed Industrial Stream NSERC CREATE program is for a unique research and training opportunity focused on UAVs to give graduate students the interdisciplinary research, entrepreneurial, and leadership skills needed to propel Canadian aerospace companies forward into a prosperous future in this field. The academic team of eleven faculty members from three universities assembled for this program, brings the unique expertise of each member, and collectively spans all key scientific and technological areas related to the design, development, and operation of versatile UAV platforms and their civil applications. The strategic research training in UAVs creates a new interdisciplinary program that directly addresses the Canadian research priorities of Information and Communications Technologies and Natural Resources.**