The Yıldız Technical University Lagari UAV Team successfully represented our university and Turkey at the IMechE UAS Challenge 2026, held in the United Kingdom, with their unmanned aerial vehicle named SEBAT. At the end of the grueling four-day competition, the Yıldız team was honored with the prestigious “Scrutineering Award” for excellence in design and technical inspection.

Our Yıldız Technical University (YTÜ) Lagari UAV Team, which participated in the IMechE UAS Challenge 2026 held in the UK, achieved a significant international success with the unmanned aerial vehicle named SEBAT, which it designed and developed entirely on its own. By winning the “Scrutineering Award,” our team once again demonstrated its engineering expertise on the international stage.

The YTÜ Lagari UAV Team competed fiercely for four days

As part of the IMechE UAS Challenge 2026, held in the United Kingdom and bringing together university teams from various countries around the world, the YTÜ Lagari UAV Team competed intensely for four days with the unmanned aerial vehicle named SEBAT, which they designed and built specifically to meet the competition’s criteria. By fulfilling all the competition’s requirements in both technical and operational phases, the team members had the opportunity to showcase the engineering excellence of their developed platform to the international panel of judges.

Awarded the Prestigious “Scrutineering Award”

As a result of the judging panel’s technical evaluations, the YTÜ Lagari UAV Team was awarded the “Scrutineering Award” for its professional design and success in the technical inspection phase. This award is among the key categories that recognize the engineering quality, production standards, safety criteria, and technical preparation processes of the vehicles within the competition.

The team’s SEBAT emerged victorious

SEBAT, developed by the team entirely in accordance with the competition’s technical requirements, drew attention with its performance throughout the competition. The YTÜ Lagari UAV Team competed with determination and perseverance during the four-day event, successfully demonstrating both the design and technical capabilities of the aircraft they developed on an international platform.

A Success for the University, Private Sector, and Public Sector

The Lagari UAV Team’s international success in the UK resulted not only from the students’ engineering achievements but also from a long-term collaborative effort involving the university, public institutions, and the private sector. Sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Turkey, TÜBİTAK, and Turkish Airlines, our team’s project—supported by the Yıldız Explorers initiative and implemented through a collaboration between Yıldız Technical University and Yıldız Technopark—was a success. 

In the project, for which Prof. Dr. Cenk Ulu served as the academic advisor, the Directorate of Health, Culture, and Sports and the Department of Cultural Services contributed to the students’ technical and organizational efforts. CMC Defense, Diyanet Center of America, Arena, Grup Arge, and Han Robotics were among the partners that also supported the competition preparation process.

In a post on its social media account, the Lagari UAV Team thanked the university administration, our Rector Prof. Dr. Eyüp Debik, our Yıldız Technopark General Manager Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muhammet Garip, SKS Department Head Dr. Osman Gördebil, and Cultural Services Branch Director Uğur Taşatan, as well as Turkish Airlines (THY), CMC Defense, the Diyanet Center of America, Arena, Grup Arge, and Han Robotics. 

Success Spanning from Teknofest to the UK

The latest success achieved in the UK marks another milestone in the YTÜ Lagari UAV Team’s consistent performance on the international stage. The team has achieved notable results in national and international competitions over the past few years.

The Lagari Team, which won the fixed-wing category at the 2021 TEKNOFEST Combat UAV Competition, took first place in a contest featuring future aerial warfare technologies such as autonomous takeoff, flight, landing, and lock-on. This success in the competition—recognized as one of the world’s most challenging unmanned aerial vehicle events—demonstrated the team’s engineering capabilities.

Another of the team’s most notable international achievements came at the 2019 AUVSI SUAS competition. In this competition—supported by the U.S. Army and leading global technology companies such as Lockheed Martin, Google, Rockwell, Boeing, and MathWorks—the YTÜ Lagari Team outperformed prestigious universities worldwide, including Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, UCLA, Penn State, and Virginia Tech. The team took first place in the fixed-wing category among 75 teams and secured third place in the overall standings.

The team also delivered a strong performance at the AUVSI SUAS 2018 competition held in 2018, ranking fifth in mission performance and eighth overall among 69 teams. In the same competition, the team achieved one of the most successful target shots in the event’s 16-year history, hitting the target with a deviation of just 1 meter from a height of approximately 40 meters.

The Lagari Team’s rise had already drawn attention in 2017. At the AUVSI SUAS 2017 event, the team placed fourth in the Technical Design Report evaluation among 59 teams and 29th in the overall standings.

With the “Scrutineering Award” won at the IMechE UAS Challenge 2026 held in the UK, the Lagari Team has added yet another achievement to its string of successes in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles on both national and international platforms.

The IMechE UAS Challenge is one of the world’s most prestigious competitions

The IMechE UAS Challenge is recognized as a prestigious engineering event organized annually in the United Kingdom by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and is considered one of the world’s leading university competitions in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles.

The competition evaluates not only flight performance but also the teams’ ability to successfully manage all engineering processes involved in developing an unmanned aerial vehicle, from the concept phase through to production. Teams are expected to design, build, test, and successfully perform operational missions with a completely original fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle that meets the competition’s criteria.

Held annually with participation from university teams across the globe—particularly in Europe—the competition stands out as one of the key events bringing together academia with the aerospace and defense industries. The rankings achieved in the competition are recognized as an important benchmark within the international engineering community, while also helping students connect with industry professionals and gain experience on a global scale.