The DroneSharks, composed of a team of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer and Information Science, and Mechanical Engineering Students took 2nd place at the 2026 RTX Autonomous Drone Competition in Arlington, Texas. From the SPARC Lab, Dr. Walter advised the Computer and Information Science students and Earnest James created the Artificial Intelligence models required by the competition.
The challenge consisted of autonomously taking off and flying a drone, communicating with a ground vehicle, discovering points of interest, and landing and traveling with the ground vehicle.