Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. will play host this weekend to the 2012 Unmanned Systems Canada student competition, which will see five university teams compete for cash prizes.

Students from five Canadian universities - including Carleton University, the University of Alberta, University of Sherbrooke, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria - will be pitting their unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against each other from May 4-6

The goal of each team is to successfully complete an fully automated operation including takeoff, target identification and landing. Teams are scored on a variety of technical aspects that range from level of automation used to the number of targets correctly identified.

The results of the competition will be announced on Monday.