Texas Aerial Robotics stemmed out of the The University of Texas at Austin’s American Helicopter Society chapter, commonly known or “AHS”. AHS was originally established as a social organization dedicated to increasing interest and knowledge of vertical takeoff landing (VTOL) rotary aircraft. Since the inception of AHS, the organization has progressively pivoted toward becoming a project based club. In its final year, AHS held an internal competition requiring the participant to design and build a small drone to fly an obstacle course. This competition was well received and generated organization-wide interest to compete in a collegiate drone competition. As of January 19th, 2017, AHS was officially re-branded as Texas Aerial Robotics, an organization with the sole purpose of competing in the International Aerial Robotics Competition.
Work began towards the IARC competition in fall 2016, but has required some ramp up and team restructuring to reach our full potential. At the beginning of the semester, the officers adopted the scrum style of project management. This technique helps to promote efficiency by setting short term goals and taking periodic pauses to plan the next “scrum” of development. This new style coupled with organizational apps, such as Trello and Slack have allowed the team to greatly increase its efficiency over the last couple of weeks.
