UPES Wins Lockheed Martin Aerospace Design Challenge

NEW DELHI - March 17, 2016 - PRLog -- Team Tesseract from UPES was declared winner at the Lockheed Martin Aerospace Design Challenge as it moved past BITS Pilani and IIT Delhi in finals to clinch the title. The team from UPES came out victorious at the C130 J Super Hercules Aircraft Roll On/Roll Off University Design Challenge award ceremony that was held on 8th March 2016. India Habitat Centre in New Delhi was the venue of the event where the UPES team entered the prototype stage and was awarded with 40,000 dollars.

Objective Behind the Challenge
Now, Lockheed Martin is to work with the UPES team in exploring options with the industry and government to develop advanced prototypes for the overseas market. The objective behind this challenge was to come up with such design specifications for the given modules that can go with Lockheed Martin C130 J Super Hercules aircraft for cargos. It is to be noted further that the capabilities displayed by the successful teams in this competition are to increase their efficiency. This can help further in handling the disaster relief operations of the future with the support of a C130 J aircraft model.

How the Teams Got Evaluated
The co-winner for this award was IIT Madras, a close competitor to the UPES. The shortlisted teams which presented with their high level designs (including the Roll On/Roll Off System) of the C130 J Super Hercules Payload were evaluated on the basis of their Technical Readiness Level. The evaluation is done while having the market feasibility in mind. According to a faculty member at UPES and Principal Investigator of the Roll On/Roll Off, Dr. Sudhir Joshi, the team would next develop a prototype and devise a go-to-market plan with the help of Tata Advanced Systems Limited, Hyderabad.

Lockheed Martin, the Name Behind It
The Lockheed Martin C130 J Roll On/Roll Off University Design Challenge was introduced in November 2014. This design competition offers a research grant to every university team that works with localised industry partners and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) mentors.

The Collaborating Partners
The aerospace giant has been running the program in association with the Department of Science and Technology, FICCI as well as the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum. It is also working in collaboration with premier educational institutions like the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas and the Stanford Graduate School of Business for global exposure.

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