#uavforge

DARPA UAVFORGE Competition Hits Milestone 2

Posted on January 20, 2012 

The DARPA uavforge competition is approaching the deadline for Milestone 2, with voting for the ‘Proof of Flight’ videos due to end on January 22 nd.  

From @sUASnews sUAS News

suasnews.com/2011/11/9975/d…

Voting results for Milestone One

1. Team: MAAV                        Score: 4.128

2. Team: GremLion                   Score: 3.450

3. Team: Cooper UDT              Score: 3.339

4. Team: icarusLabs                   Score: 3.259

5. Team: Extractor X                Score: 3.182

6. Team: VoRPaL                      Score: 3.156

7. Team: AeroQuad.com          Score: 3.137

8. Team: Electric UAV            Score: 2.863

9. Team: ATMOS                      Score: 2.853

DARPA (The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) created an initiative to crowd source the development of the next generation of UAVs. Their goal with this initiative is to facilitate the exchange of ideas among the international community.

The website provides the platform for the teams to work collaboratively, design and develop in the challenge. Small business, hobbyists and students are especially encouraged to participate in the challenge.

A top manufacturing company will also be selected to participate in the challenge and provide the teams with insight and expertise.

Top teams will be invited to present their project and compete in a fly-off. The winning team will win a prize of $100,000, a subcontract with a manufacturer in order to produce a limited number of systems and an invitation to demonstrate their project in an exclusive operational military demo.

There are many technical specifications that the projects that participate in the challenge need to meet. The goal of the challenge is to provide a system that can fit in a backpack of a single soldier, vertically take-off and land, fly to the target area while avoiding obstacles, land in the target area and transmit video for several hours, fly back while avoiding obstacles, overcome a communication out, follow a moving target in real-time and come back and land safely.

The UAVForge challenge consists of 3 phases:

Phase 1:

Concept video - Competing teams are required to submit videos to advertise their skills, design sketches, algorithms etc. The teams that submitted the top ranked videos of this stage are encouraged to participate in the following stages.

Proof of flight video - The competing teams are required to demonstrate the early flight behaviors and capabilities of their system. Similarly to the first stage, the teams that submitted the top ranked videos of this stage are encouraged to participate in the following stage.

Live video demo - The competing team are required to participate in a live video demonstration of their system. Additionally, the teams must provide complete design information of their project for evaluation. The 10 top teams of this stage will be invited to the competition fly-off.

Phase 2:

Competition fly-off - The 10 top teams will participate in a live competition where they will be judged according to the Technical Performance Criteria of the challenge. The winning team will receive a $100,000 prize and the opportunity to demonstrate its project in an exclusive operational exercise.

Phase 3:

The manufacturer and the winning team will work together in order to fabricate up to 15 pieces of the project.

Looking for something to do this summer?  Why not build an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) for DARPA? More specifically, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency has put a call out for citizens and amateur inventors to help them build "A user-friendly—and small enough to fit into a backpack—UAV that silently flies in and out of dangerous environments to conduct sustained surveillance for up to three hours."

The successful design will win $100,000 and the opportunity to have the design deployed in an overseas military exercise. 

You could build something like this: