UAV’s are everywhere these days. It seems I can’t even walk out of my house without running into a quad-rotor of some sort. Even local law enforcement agencies are getting into the act with their recent acquisition of military surplus.
For those of you who love them, Darpa (Defense Research Products Agency) has teamed up with SSC Atlantic (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center) to give us average ‘Joes’ the opportunity to design the next generation of Unmanned Ariel Vehicles. Called "UAVForge," (started at the end of 2011) contest is heating up in competition with both the crazy and conventional designs. The collaboration uses ‘crowd-sourcing’ as well as a virtual environment and a fictional scenario that participants use to design their UAV’s. You can design by yourself, with a team or you may join an existing team but the contest states that participants have until Feb. 23 2012 to do so.
The contest consists of 6 ‘milestones’ each group or person must go through before the winner is chosen.
● Milestone 1: Contestants create a concept video to show of the design to which it’s then voted on to which the winners proceed to the next level.
● Milestone 2: Proof of flight. It has to be able to fly. The winners of this stage advance to the next round of competition.
● Milestone 3: This is where things get riveting as contestants compete with a live video demonstration.
● Milestone 4: This is the competition ‘fly-off’ where contestants compete for the prize of $100,000 US and have an opportunity to pilot the vehicle in an operational exercise.
● Milestone 5: Winners are transported all expenses paid to an operational field scenario.
● Milestone 6: The winner is awarded a contract to produce 15 operational vehicles.
Concept UAV from the competition (via DARPA)
The video’s for these UAV designs give two impressions to the viewer, ‘I can’t believe that flies’ to the ingenious. Standings for milestone 2 were based off of 385 individuals casting 1511 votes along with 255 comments making GremLion, an electrical and computer engineering team from the University of Singapore coming in at number 1 out of ten so far for this round. Their design looks like a hovering shop-vac with a helicopter rotor positioned vertically in the center of it. As crazy as that sounds, the design is incredibly stable and also features ground-tracking as well as obstacle avoidance capabilities. You can see all the entry videos along with all the contest rules and regulations at the UAVForge website found here: http://www.uavforge.net/
Whether you join in on the fray or not, this is one competition to follow.
Cabe
