Competition on Paparazzi UAV Blog

It's been a long time...

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:57:11 +0000

…since anyone took the time to post here.

Paparazzi is still there. We have a new stable version (https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi/releases/tag/v7.0.0_stable), many projects on VTOL and swarms, several awards at IMAV competitions.

Hopefully, we’ll spend more time to give news.

In the meantime, see you at the next IMAV in Strasbourg, France.

ENAC Team wins at IMAV2022

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 12:39:52 +0000

The International Conference and Competition on MAV was organized by TUDelft mid-September 2022. The ENAC took part to the outdoor competition, a package delivery challenge, with several multi-rotors and a hybrid tail-sitter, all powered by Paparazzi.

They won the competition with a quite large amount of points. Nevertheless, all teams performed well with some innovative platforms.

Several papers have been presented to the conference by the ENAC team and the other participants. The proceedings are freely available on the conference website.

Paparazzi wins at IMAV2018

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 16:24:44 +0000

Enac UAV team and TUDelft MAVLAB team took part to the IMAV2018 conference and competition in Australia with great success!

For the first time, the two academic lead developers of the Paparazzi UAV system join efforts to participate to the Outdoor competition and won this event far ahead.

Several tasks have been completed, including a mapping (performed using OpenDroneMap) of the flight area with automatic detection of hazards hidden in the field (with a light fixed wing aircraft) and an autonomous obstacles avoidance navigation near trees (with Bebop2 + SlamDunk from Parrot).

IMAV2016

Mon, 24 Oct 2016 21:43:49 +0000

The International Micro-Air Vehicle Conference and Competition was held last week in Beijing, China, organized by the Beijing Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore.

As usual, the level of the teams involved in the competition is higher year after year and we had a great show. The team from the MAVLAB of TUDelft was participating to both indoor and outdoor session. During the outdoor, they unfortunately couldn’t show their best due to many communication issues, preventing them to fully use their RTK Bebop2 (and also some regressions in Paparazzi code, hum hum… :( ).

DELFTACOPTER - Hybrid Drone on a Mission

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 19:26:38 +0000

DELFTACOPTER, an electric, long range, transitioning autonomous delta-wing helicopter, is on a mission. What mission? In this case, it’s the 2016 Outback Medical Express challenge and the MAVLab Team at TUDelft has high hopes for their hybrid aircraft.

This year’s Outback Medical Express mission requires a UAV to pick up and bring back a blood sample of an ill-fated person called “Outback Joe” located at an inaccessible roughly known location 30 kilometer away remote location with unknown terrain.

IMAV 2015 Competition

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 08:50:55 +0000

This year‘s International Micro Air Vehicles Conference and Flight Competition (IMAV 2015) is organized by the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of the RWTH Aachen University and the German Institute of Navigation. It takes place in Aachen, Germany from September 15 - 18, 2015. If you are in the area, you should check out the event.

IMAV is a yearly event that combines a diversified scientific conference with a technological competition involving Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). Such a combination allows research groups from all over the world to share their knowledge, and stimulates them to focus on research that can be used in real life scenarios. Every year the competition scenarios become more advanced and more extensive. However, competitors are given the opportunity to either do complete missions, or to focus on sub-elements of the mission scenario.

TU Delft Student Challenge 2015

Wed, 27 May 2015 11:09:28 +0000

Students at the TU Delft MavLab compete with ARDrones running Paparazzi to fly seamlessly around obstacles without injuring the aircraft. The object to autonomously avoid all obstacles. This is a fantastic demonstration of the flexibility of the Paparazzi system and its ability to fly accurately around waypoints.

IMAV 2014 Recap

Sat, 16 Aug 2014 06:27:37 +0000

IMAV 2014 was a great experience this year. If you don’t know what it is, its a micro air vehicle competition and conference that was held in Delft, Netherlands.

During the three days of the conference, there were many very interesting talks and presentations as well as an incredible showcase of research talent during the competition. Here is a playlist of the talks, they can be found on the TU Delft MAVlab YouTube channel.

IMAV 2014 Live Streams

Tue, 12 Aug 2014 00:00:45 +0000

The Micro Aerial Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab) of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is proud the present the 2014 International Micro Air Vehicle Conference (IMAV 2014), now offering the possibility of attending the conference by live stream free-of-cost. The live stream will support most platforms showing innovative keynotes of pioneers in the industry as well as the current state-of-the-art presented by many researchers working on MAV’s. The schedule is published on the website of the conference. Tuesday, August 12th, 2014

IMAV 2013

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 00:00:28 +0000

The MavLab team of TU Delft consisted of 12 people coming from aerospace, computer science, embedded programming and artificial intelligence. Thanks to the enormous team efforts in the last months, the team has won prizes in all the categories in which it participated at IMAV 2013 in Toulouse, France:

Outdoor: 1st place

With an autonomous swarm of 12 MAVs operated by a single operator. The MAVs only had to be plugged in and started with their own flight plan, while the operator could monitor their mission status and intervene where necessary. Our participation featured four main innovations: (1) a single operator for 12 MAVs, 3 hybrid UAVs, 7 Parrot AR drones and 2 mini-quadrotors, (2) onboard vision processing on the AR drone with Paparazzi, (3) hybrid UAVs able to fly under any attitude, and (4) the world’s smallest open source autopilot, Lisa/S (2 grams). The wind conditions were terrible on the outdoor competition day, with 6 Bft, and most teams had their MAVs blown away. Everybody was impressed with how the hybrid UAVs were able to cope nicely with these conditions and were still able to perform a precision landing.

ATMOS Hybrid UAV

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:00:58 +0000

ATMOS, a hybrid airplane-quadrotor developed at the MavLab of TU-Delft, was awarded third place (out of 140) in the UAVForge Competition. There were more than 140 initial contestants and after several selection rounds with only 12 finalists, the paparazzi Lisa/M powered ATMOS was one of the few that could actually make it to the remote target site miles away in an RF unfriendly environment. No team fully completed the baseline objectives which is why no prices were issued. The vertical takeoff and landing, together with long range thanks to the wing and flexibility thanks to open-source paparazzi were key factors in this event [1].

1st Place at IMAV 2012 for ENAC Paparazzi Team

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:00:18 +0000

Blender, the small but deserving quadrotor of the ENAC Paparazzi Team took the 1st place in the “Outdoor autonomy challenge” and 3rd place in the “Outdoor flight dynamics challenge” during the IMAV2012 competition in Braunschweig, Germany. Completing its missions with overflowing enthusiasm thanks to the new NavGo autopilot. NavGo is the latest in the long line of award winning Paparazzi hardware available. See the list of Paparazzi hardware here.

IMAV 2011

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

This year IMAV 2011 in Delft, Netherlands went really well for all of the participants, we have seen lots of successful flights. ENAC Paparazzi Team took the 2nd place in general “Outdoor Autonomy Challenge” and Fire Storm demonstrated 105+ minutes of flight and took the “Best Outdoor Endurance Award”. He was waiting for this day for 2 years since the cancelation of IMAV 09. Additionally, Fire Storm flew its endurance mission with the new Umarim V1.0 autopilot board which will be released soon.

IMAV 2010 Competition

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:03:16 +0000

The IMAV 2010 International Micro Air Vehicles Conference and Flight Competition took place today in Braunschweig, Germany. The ENAC Paparazzi team took home 1st place for the outdoor
autonomy mission and 2nd place for the indoor flight dynamics
challenge. Both the indoor and the outdoor event consisted of two separate competitions, one focusing on high maneuverability, the other one focussing on the MAV’s ability to perform a complex
autonomous mission.

Outback Challenge 2009

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:26 +0000

Brisbane Grammar School UAV

Team “Look mAh, no hands!” signalling the UAV is in fully autonomous mode

Paparazzi was a big success at the 2009 UAV Outback Challenge held at Kingaroy Airport, Queensland, Australia, Sep. 28-30. Team “Look mAh, no hands!” representing Brisbane Grammar School, won the ‘Robot Airborne Delivery Challenge’ placing 1st, after performing an autonomous mission phase including autonomous payload release. The team consisted of four members in their senior years of high-school, and was led by team captain Ben Paratz. Many thanks to the paparazzi community, not only for the autopilot itself but for the assistance that was enthusiastically given whenever needed. Link to competition

EMAV 09 Recap

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:42 +0000

EMAV09 has already passed, now it is time to reveal our (ENAC-ISAE) new designs:

Fire-Storm a 50cm wingspan MAV.
Solar-Storm a 50cm wingspan MAV with hybrid power supply (solar and batteries).

EMAV 09 Results

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:02:03 +0000

The EMAV09 competition took place in Delft, Netherlands. With ENAC’s Paparazzi team winning second place in the outdoor mission this year.

1st Place at AUVSI for USU-OSAM Paparazzi team

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:09 +0000

The USU-OSAM Paparazzi team won the 1st place in the 7th AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International) Student Unmanned Aircraft System Competition (18 teams total). The competition was held at Webster Field, Maryland, Jun. 17-20. The honor also goes to all of the Paparazzi community, especially the developers. Link to competition

Paparazzi in the Industry

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:08 +0000

The Paparazzi System has been shown at Paris Le Bourget Airshow by three companies:

Fly-n-Sense with products FNS900-Seeker and ScanCopter CB500.
AeroArt with the plume project with the support of Fly-n-Sense.
Thales with the Spy’Arrow MAV.

ENAC / Paparazzi wins ONERA-DGA Challenge

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:18 +0000

ENAC / Paparazzi has won the ONERA-DGA Challenge, in France with a quadrotor. Twelve teams of French Universities out of 19 were chosen by ONERA-DGA to participate in this two years contest. ENAC designed a Paparazzi equipped Asctec quadrotor with an IMU developed in its lab.

EMAV 2009 Invitation

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:32 +0000

Dear Paparazzi members, the registration for EMAV09 is now open at http://www.emav09.org/.

We look forward to meeting many paparazzi teams at this yearly event.

Motodrone in Finowfurt

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:40 +0000

A paparazzi team took part in the Motodrone event held in Finowfurt near Berlin. It was fun, the beer was cool and barbecues worked flawlessly. And we flew funjets… Video

Second Place at Student AUVSI Competition

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:51 +0000

The OSAM Paparazzi team took 2nd place in the Sixth Annual Student Unmanned Aerial Systems Competition! The event is sponsored by AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International) and was held at Webster Field, St. Inigoes, Maryland. It should also be noted that this was Paparazzi’s and the OSAM Paparazzi team’s first time at the competition. Link to competition Highlight Video of Competition

US-Asian MAV 2008

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:21:18 +0000

Paparazzi attended the US-Asian MAV 2008 competition taking place in Agra, India. The ENAC team won the “Best Autonomous MAV” Award.

Here is the program for the event.

MAV08 Proceedings

MAV 07 Success

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:11 +0000

MAV 07 was yet another great success for the project! Paparazzi teams took 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th places in the outdoor autonomous surveillance competition and were honored to share the 1st place award with the very well designed Micropilot-equipped 48cm Ping Wing from Linköping University in Sweden. The first Paparazzi helicopter, Twisted Logic proved that a passively stable helicopter could operate well in mild outdoor winds and also took 2nd place in the indoor competition, surpassed only by the “Father of passively stable helicopters”, world famous Petter Muren of Proxflyer and BladeRunner fame. The team of Christian Lindenberg and (fake) Martin Müller also won the special award from the jury for it general performance and fair spirit.

MAV 07

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:02 +0000

MAV 07 will be held in Toulouse, France (of course!) September 17-21, 2007. Expect to see lots of great Paparazzi systems kicking ass and taking names!

2nd and 3rd places on MAV 06

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 00:00:17 +0000

Two Paparazzi teams, ENAC/Miraterre and Martin Mueller/Christian Lindeberg won 2nd and 3rd place at the MAV06 competition in Sandestin, Florida. Unfortunately, both teams had insufficient video resolution to identify the 1.5m ground target required for high-scoring and the winning prize went to Bringham Young University who was able to identify 2 of the 3 targets with a Panasonic KX-141 camera and an unusually narrow 30 degree FOV lens. The Bringham Young team used the Procerus Kestrel autopilot (originally developed at the university) and obviously practiced video target recognition much more than the rest of us.

2003 - 2006

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:45 +0000

Paparazzi has come a long way since it’s creation in 2003. For a bit of nostalgia browse the original website.

EMAV 06 Results

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:14:12 +0000

The EMAV06 competition took place in Braunschweig, Germany. All the teams were equipped with Paparazzi. With four Paparazzi teams winning four first places. ENAC took 3rd place in the “Fixed-Wing” category.

MAV 05 Results

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 09:35:37 +0000

MAV05 took place in Garmisch, Germany. With three ENAC Paparazzi teams taking the first three places in the competition.

JMD 04 Results

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:18:38 +0000

Paparazzi was very successful at the JMD04 (Journées Micro Drones) competition/conference in Toulouse, France. The ENAC team won first place with the Microjet. Here is the report from Antoine Drouin.

Hi everybody

Paparazzi’s microjet won the JMD04 MAV event ( http://www.micro-uav04.net/ )

During the event, we had contact with industrials who told us they were interested in manufacturing our board. Maybe the end of the nightmare for those of you who don’t enjoy the soldering iron :)

EMAV 04 Results

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:16:28 +0000

EMAV04 took place in Braunscheweig, Germany. With the ENAC Paparazzi team taking the first place with a Microjet (0.65cm, 0.4kg).

First Place at Ensica/Supaéro "journées microdrone"

Fri, 03 Oct 2003 07:56:46 +0000

ENAC’s Paparazzi team placed first in the Ensica/Supaéro “journées micro drone” in France. Here is the report from Antoine Drouin.

Hi folks..

Paparazzi has won first prize in the Ensica/Supaéro “journées microdrone” (http://www.ensica.fr/microdrone).

It successfully completed the autonomous flight and was able to locate the target :)

More details on the webpage asap.

Regards,

Antoine

JMD 03 Results

Sat, 20 Sep 2003 09:10:32 +0000

Paparazzi was very successful at the JMD03 (Journées Micro Drones) competition/conference in Toulouse, France. The ENAC team won first place with a Twinstar (1.4m, 1.4kg).