Four primary goals motivated the formation of the MIT/Draper Laboratory autonomous helicopter team. The principle objective was to demonstrate a competitive entry at the 1995 International Aerial Robotics Competition. Secondly, the project succeeded in fostering interaction between MIT students from several academic departments and engineers from Draper. In addition to creating undergraduate research opportunities, the team provided experience in systems engineering and project management for graduate students and younger Draper staff. Finally, supporting this project represented the first phase of a Draper program to develop a platform which will be used to demonstrate Draper's expertise in the area of automatic mission planning.