On any given Thursday night, one will find the Aerial Robotics Club at NC State hard at work in Engineering Building three on Centennial campus.

A laid back atmosphere enveloped the lab as I spoke with RJ Gritter, the recent ex-president of the ARC and senior in Aerospace Engineering.  

Gritter gazed around the room filled with flight equipment, airplane simulators and fifteen eager, bright young engineers and explained the recent struggles and victories of the club he has invested so much of his heart and soul into.

The ARC at NC State was founded in 1999 and concentrates on building and flying autonomous airplanes. For the past 12 years the club has flown in an international Unmanned Aerial Vehicle student competition held in Maryland. This past summer, the ARC club won, and Gritter expressed his pride for this honor.

“At competition not a single thing went wrong,” Gritter explained, “It was a nice feeling.”

NC State is the only competitor in the area. It has been in every competition, and this year, beat 35 other collegiate teams in the international competition.

The goal of the competition is to have an airplane that can fly itself, can take off and find waypoints.

“The more hands-off, the better,” Gritter said, “we have an imagery system that we use to capture pictures of targets on the ground and identify the characteristics of the target as well as locate them.”

Those are the primary objectives of the competition, and this year a new objective was added—the use of infrared imagery and a “drop-task”—the club had to drop a package to a target on the ground.

Justin Easter, this year’s president of ARC and senior in computer engineering, described the scene this summer when the club completed the objectives perfectly.

“It was absolutely beautiful, we knew we found all the targets because they spelled “fireman”, by the time we landed, we knew it went perfect,” Easter said.

Gritter explained that the club emphasizes designing and building the systems themselves, as well as improving them from year to year. Two years ago the club decided to start from scratch and change from the system they had been flying for the past six years.

Gritter illustrated the daunting task, “We said we want to build a brand new airplane, camera and imagery system, and we started over and designed all of that from scratch. The first year we flew that plane in competition, we came in second, then we put in a tremendous amount of work and won this year.”

Gritter explained that this year the ARC took a step back and refined everything about the new system and the payoff was tremendous.

The ARC has around 20 members and is self-paced and self-motivated, the members come in and work whenever they want to. Some work in-between classes regularly, while others come a couple nights a week.

Gritter explained what he and the other members have taken from their time in the club.

“A lot of what we do in this club are related to your major, whether it’s aerospace [engineering], mechanical [engineering], computer engineering or electrical [engineering]. But it gives you a very firm application for that. It lets you go through the whole process of design and development through the testing of systems. Our members when they graduate are some of the most qualified engineers to work on unmanned aerial systems that there are,” Gritter said proudly, “There are lots of companies at competition who are ready to take our resumes. All of our club members end up with rather good jobs because they have some unique qualifications.”

Gritter admitted modestly that he himself “has a couple things lined up,” on the job front.

When questioned about this past year’s struggles, Gritter and Easter exchanged glances, and Gritter began, “Well this is kind of sad to talk about,” and regales the disappointment that he and the ARC felt when they were unable to raise the funds to attend the Australia Search and Rescue Competition.

The ARC was one of the 20 teams out of the 88 teams that applied that were invited, and the only team from the United States.

The objective of the competition is to find a missing hiker in the Outback and drop a water bottle to them.

“The next time it comes around, we’ll be there,” Gritter said.

“A lot of work went into it; it was definitely disappointing to not be able to go,” admitted Easter.

Both Gritter and Easter agreed that teamwork is their favorite take-away from their time in the ARC.

“Getting to the point of everything working and everyone working well together is the best feeling of accomplishment,” Easter said.

Kim Nguyen and Lindsey Reed, both seniors in Aerospace Engineering, shared their experiences in the ARC. They both agreed that the early morning flight tests are their favorite part of being a member. Reed works a lot with the autopilot systems and enjoys seeing her hard work pay off while practicing for competition at flight tests.

Nguyen explained the fun, hard and interesting work that encompasses her four years with the club, as she laughed and shared an inside joke with Gritter from across the room. She said the helpful attitude of the club has helped her learn. Nguyen explained that she has learned everything she knows about systems engineering from her time in the ARC. She explained that she hasn’t learned much about systems engineering within her degree, so her time in the ARC has been invaluable—she said at every company there is a small group of systems engineers.

Easter encouraged students of all majors to come and check out the club, “We are accepting of everyone, if you are willing to put in the time.”

Gritter said anyone who is interested is welcome, regardless of their major.