RMIT students make final of the prestigious international design competition Airbus’ Fly Your Ideas
AUSTRALIAN university student have made the finals of aviation giant Airbus’s prestigious design competition with an idea that could change firefighting forever.
AUSTRALIAN university students are punching above their weight, making the finals of aviation giant Airbus’s prestigious international design competition for the third time, while up against the best and brightest young innovators from around the world.
“It’s all so amazing and exciting and we genuinely believe our idea has the potential to positively affect thousands of lives across the globe,” RMIT student Kerry Phillips, 25, said.
Phillips, originally from Perth, is one of three members of an RMIT team to make Airbus’s lucrative, biennial Fly Your Ideas competition finals this year.
RMIT’s “Team Aquarius” bid is a new type of pressurised, fire retardant tank that can be fixed to fast-loadable pallets to quickly transform giant Airbus A400M military transports into massive, aerial firefighters capable of attacking and suppressing all large-scale wildfires, with a retardant payload of 30,000 litres.
“We researched deeply in to the increasing risk and severity of wildfires around the world and realised that something needs to be done on a global scale,” Phillips, who is tackling a double degree in aviation applied science and business management, said.
The cost of wildfires is soaring, with the most recent recovery funding estimates for the horrific Fort McMurray fires in Canada last year estimated at more than $8 billion.
Charles Champion, Airbus operations president and executive vice president of engineering, said the Fly Your Ideas competition, run in partnership with UNESCO, obviously captured the imagination, engagement and enthusiasm of students worldwide but “nowhere more so than in Australia”.
“The inaugural competition in 2009 was won by a team from Queensland University while the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology team were runners up in 2013 and are again represented in this year’s finals.
“Australian teams have done particularly well and I’d like to congratulate students and academic staff in Australia for supporting FYI and making it such a soaring success.”
The team, also including team leader Anil Raj Ravindran, 26, and Philipp Klink, 23, made the final five this year out of 356 entries, from 348 universities in 89 countries.
From Melbourne, Ravindran, a PhD student, and Klink are both studying aerospace engineering.
Up for grabs is a 30,000 euro first prize and 15,000 euros for the runners up.
The five finalist teams, including from Hong Kong, the UK, Nigeria and one home grown French team, will be flown by Airbus to the company’s headquarters in Toulouse, France, with the winners to be decided after a final presentation to an expert panel on May 17.
Ravindran said fire retardant tanks for medium-sized military cargo aircraft had been developed previously but there was a need for a modular system for larger planes.
“Words can’t describe how happy we are making the finals – most importantly representing RMIT and Australia,” Ravindran said.
And they’re optimistic.
“Being one of the best and multidisciplinary teams that I’ve worked with, we are confident in winning due to the commitment my team mates and supervisors put into the project.
“But even if we don’t win the competition, we believe our Airbus FYI project addresses a global problem in a broad context and to me, personally, the opportunity to share our ideas with industrial leaders is itself a prize.”
The other finalist teams’ ideas include a system to improve airport taxiing flow and efficiency and a mobile app to assign boarding status according to the size of passengers’ carry-on luggage to address current storage issues in overhead lockers.
Originally published as RMIT students make final of the prestigious international design competition Airbus’ Fly Your Ideas
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