Southport's buzzing this weekend with the Unmanned Systems Canada UAV Student Competition.

However, Unmanned Systems Canada Chair Mark Aruja stresses there's a lot more to the technology than the competition, noting it's one of the fastest growing industries in Canada.

"One example is first responders and public safety. Police can arrive at a scene to accident reconstruction, and open up highways, in a fraction of the time that it was done previously. The construction industry is using these now every day to improve the planning of, let's say, highway construction plans. Let alone one that we're focusing on with this competition, which is so-called precision agriculture."

Aruja says unmanned systems technologies at work in the Portage area, through precision agriculture, providing an improved understanding of a crop in space and time.

Mark Aruja

"You can get a satellite image -- it might have a resolution of metres, and you get a new image every few weeks. We're talking about take an image first thing in the morning, and actually do something with it, maybe even down resolutions of centimetres, within hours. This is the big change and the big picture of how you can control the input of the crop, improve yields."

He adds the teams learn more than technology by being part of the competition.

"There's marketing, because they've got to go and get sponsors. But a big thing out this is teamwork. And one of the things they have to do up front is present a plan of how they're going to do their work. They actually have to manage their schedule, the finances, they have to manage the technical risk programs, and then it goes beyond the technology. They have to talk to Transport Canada to actually get permission to do these things. They've got to go to insurance companies, under the law, and get liability insurance."

The UAV competition wraps up tomorrow afternoon.