Use the blimp, Luke?

The innovative blimp was part of a project called Skywalker Systems and it’s just one of the futuristic concepts created during the event. Sponsored by Airbus, it pitted four teams of design students against one another in a week-long competition to come up with an aeronautic device capable of changing the world.

In addition to this bold task, the teams faced challenges ranging from jet lag to simply not knowing one another. Each group was comprised of students from across Europe and beyond who hadn’t met prior to the competition on July 3, 2016. If that wasn’t daunting enough, after a week of trying to design a brilliant piece of engineering and a business scheme to go with it, their work was judged during a final presentation round that was inspired by a certain BBC reality show. “We can’t recreate what the industry is doing but we can recreate a Dragon’s Den style jury,” Airbus Corporate Innovator Gregor Dirks said during his introduction. “That’s the role that’s been given to my colleagues and I.”

The final designs ranged from a plan to aid the victims of major catastrophes to a complex system to help companies manoeuvre delivery drones through heavy aerial traffic. A team called Find Air designed a drone that could one day help find and eradicate mosquito colonies in order to fight diseases like the Zika virus. Another team named Air Force One created a small drone capable of launching out of an injured hiker’s backpack and transporting images and vital information to emergency rescue workers.

But, after each team answered some tough questions from a panel of judges comprised of experts from TU Delft and the field of engineering, Skywalker Systems came out on top. Their conceptual blimp was designed to run on solar power and use a sophisticated net comprised of titanium and other materials capable of capturing air pollution and delivering it to a facility where it could later be converted into fertiliser.