Designing, building, and flying autonomous aerial vehicles — pushing the frontier of drone technology on campus.
SOMARS (Student Organization for Marine and Aerial Robotics Systems) is UC Santa Cruz's autonomous drone team under Slugbotics. We design, build, and program unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of fully autonomous flight — no remote pilot required.
Our team brings together students from computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and beyond to tackle every layer of the drone stack, from carbon fiber airframes to computer-vision-guided navigation.
SOMARS competes in two major student UAV competitions that challenge us to build fully autonomous aerial systems capable of real-world mission tasks.
The Collegiate Unmanned Aircraft Systems Competition (C-UASC) tests student teams on autonomous fixed-wing and multi-rotor flight operations, including waypoint navigation, payload drop, and autonomous landing. Teams are scored on mission completion, technical reports, and oral presentations.
TO BE FINISHED LATER — add specific mission details, dates, locationThe Student Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) Competition, hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), is one of the most prestigious student UAV competitions. Teams must complete an autonomous search-and-rescue-style mission including obstacle avoidance, target identification, and payload delivery.
TO BE FINISHED LATER — add specific mission details, dates, locationEverything we build aims to be fully autonomous — the drone plans its own path, avoids obstacles, detects targets with computer vision, and makes decisions without human intervention in the loop.
We believe in a strong simulation-first development cycle: algorithms are tested in Gazebo before ever flying on real hardware, dramatically reducing the risk of crashes and accelerating iteration speed.
SOMARS is organized into four specialized subteams, each owning a core part of the autonomous drone system. Learn more →
Designing and manufacturing the drone airframe, chassis, and payload systems.
Hardware integration, firmware, flight controllers, and autonomous controls software.
Computer vision pipelines for autonomous navigation and object detection.
Gazebo-based simulation of flight paths and autonomous behaviors before real-world testing.
This is our current active season. We are working toward our first competition entries at C-UASC and SUAS, building out our autonomous flight platform from the ground up.
Milestones include finalizing the drone airframe, integrating our autonomous flight stack, and running full end-to-end simulations before initial flight tests.
TO BE FINISHED LATER — fill in season details, milestones, competition datesInterested in joining or learning more? Reach out!
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