---
title: ‘Gambit’ Pays Off in UMD Team’s Search-and-Rescue Competition Win
date: 2023-05-15T17:00:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/gambit-pays-off-in-umd-teams-search-and-rescue-competition-win"
section: Articles
---
# ‘Gambit’ Pays Off in UMD Team’s Search-and-Rescue Competition Win

*May 15, 2023* — by [Jennifer Figgins Rooks](/author/jennifer-rooks)


> Drone Negotiated Indoor Chaos of a Simulated Quake to Bring Aid—and Bring Home $150K Prize

*Gambitdrone 1920x1080 — The Autonomous Micro Air Vehicle team took first place in the NIST First Responder UAS Indoor Challenge using its own Gambit drone, which combines a unique set of capabilities and low cost.*

A University of Maryland team hustled a compact drone through doors, down hallways and past obstacles to beat out 10 fellow competitors in a search-and-rescue-themed competition earlier this month and bring home the grand prize of $150,000.

UMD’s [Autonomous Micro Air Vehicle (AMAV](http://amav.umd.edu/)) team not only won the final round of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) First Responder UAS Indoor Challenge—after winning a similar NIST-sponsored competition last year—but scored four out of the six Best-in-Class awards. The event at Kansas State University simulated a rescue indoors after a hypothetical earthquake rendered a building interior hazardous for human rescuers and featured a course with faux debris and victims in need of help.

“It was an incredibly challenging environment to design for,” said Animesh Shastry, an aerospace engineering Ph.D. student and the team leader. “Imagine a multistory building with ceiling tiles and wires hanging down, furniture tipped over, and mannequins under mattresses and just junk everywhere, with debris and dust in the air.”

To address the unique challenges of indoor flight, the team developed an agile, compact drone they dubbed Gambit that used an advanced onboard sensing system enabling it to fly without the use of GPS.

“It’s a technique called visual odometry,” said Derek Paley, professor of aerospace engineering, director of the Maryland Robotic Center, and the team’s adviser. “Onboard cameras allow Gambit to localize features and deduce its own motion relative to those features. It can hold its position with incredible stability and maneuver much more reliably even in the absence of GPS.”

Gambit also features thermal, high-definition (HD), and night-vision cameras on a gimbal with 180-degree range so it can still “see” in a dark environment. However, all of this technology had to be developed to be as cost-effective as possible per NIST competition guidelines.



*AMAV team — UMD AMAV team members Qingwen Wei '23 and Ph.D. student Animesh Shastry hold the grand prize check, flanked by NIST personnel; not pictured: AMAV team members Jeffin Kachappilly and Henry Segal.*




**Topics:** [Campus & Community](https://today.umd.edu/tags/campus-community)


**Tags:** [Academic Competitions](https://today.umd.edu/topic/academic-competitions), [Aerospace Engineering](https://today.umd.edu/topic/aerospace-engineering), [Student Experience](https://today.umd.edu/topic/student-experience)


**Units:** [A. James Clark School of Engineering](https://today.umd.edu/topic/james-clark-school-engineering)