DARPA creating its own DIY Drones--"UAVForge"!!!
Holy crap. DARPA has just announced a project to use the DIY Drones model for the future of military UAVs. Called UAVForge, which is already up and running (although it crashes Firefox on my machine), it is described in the official request for proposals like this:
This initiative aims to produce a small, affordable, and easy to operate unmanned air vehicle capable of persistent perch and stare surveillance. The successful offeror will empower a diverse community of innovators and emergent design teams by providing manufacturing capabilities and assessments and producing up to 15 units of the winning design. The UAVForge initiative will employ a collaboration website and a fly-off competition, both developed and administered for DARPA/TTO by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Atlantic (SSC Atlantic), Charleston, SC.
Here's a conceptual video:
Many more details are in the full pdf description here. It's a $2 million project, with $100,000 going to the winning designer.
Some excerpts:
Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have proven important in modern military operations and
show promise for civil applications. Portable UAVs are used by the military for reconnaissance
missions and have been used commercially for tasks such as monitoring oil and gas pipelines,
and tracking wildfires. However, the effective use of state-of-the-art systems is constrained by
cost and performance as well as high logistic support and operator skill and workload demands,
compared to more routinely employed portable military equipment, like GPS and night vision
devices.
The UAVForge initiative will use a collaboration/competition crowdsource approach to produce
a small, affordable, and easy to operate UAV capable of persistent perch and stare surveillance.
Novel manufacturing concepts and resources will empower a diverse community of innovators
and emergent teams to deliver a superior UAV system solution relative to state-of-the-art
systems. The overall objective of UAVForge is to develop an aircraft that costs $10,000 or less
per unit, can be carried in a rucksack by an individual, can fly to and perch in useful locations at
several kilometers range for periods of several hours, and provide continuous, real-time
surveillance without dedicated or specialized operators.
In this solicitation, DARPA is seeking innovative manufacturing services to facilitate the
UAVForge initiative. The selected manufacturer will support collaboration and produce the
winning design from the UAVForge competition.
UAVForge is a DARPA/TTO initiative supported by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems
Center, Atlantic (SSC Atlantic), Charleston, South Carolina, to leverage the unique potential of
crowdsourcing. SSC Atlantic will develop and maintain the www.UAVForge.net website, which
provides participants with the virtual environment and tools necessary to organize and
collaborate independent of geographic location, education, profession, or experience. The virtual
environment features collaboration tools including shared and private information spaces,
message boards, mailing lists, and other features that enable effective collaboration.
Collaboration will focus on an objective list of small UAV capabilities (Appendix 1). A series of
multimedia-based milestones (Appendix 2) will encourage the formation of ad-hoc teams around
promising solutions. These teams will develop functional design prototypes. DARPA will select,
based on published criteria and crowd/manufacturer input, the top ten designs to participate in a
fly-off competition hosted by SSC Atlantic (Appendix 3). DARPA will select one winning
design based on the results of the competition and crowd/manufacturer input. The winning team
will receive a $100,000 prize and an invitation to participate in an exclusive overseas military
demonstration exercise.
The selected manufacturer from this solicitation will provide the winning team with a subcontract to produce an initial lot of up to 15 UAVs for government experimentation. The selected manufacturer will play an integral role in the evolution and execution of the UAVForge initiative. For planning purposes, award of the manufacturing services contract will occur four months after the start of UAVForge collaboration and four months before the fly-off competition.
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Comment by Dano on May 25, 2011 at 8:11pm -
Perch and transmit video has already been done by several companies including us.... DARPA role is beyond immediate military needs and focus's on the future of technology... Working with them can be either a dream or a headache but I will state from experience, once they are convinced the proposal has merit they are very fast at getting the 'product" to market compared to regular DoD channels.
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Moderator Comment by Roberto Navoni on May 25, 2011 at 10:41pm -
Dear Friends,
I open on UAVFORGE the virtualrobotix team , and propose our special project for the contest.
We develop our project using MP32 that is a good platform for reply to performances requested by the contest .
if someone would join our team is welcome :) We would work and develop our two special project the variable pitch and hybrid quad.
Best
Roberto
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Developer Comment by Doug Weibel on May 26, 2011 at 8:16am -
What a crazy program. You get a whole bunch of people to do the hard part (IMO)(the design work) for free by having a contest and give the winner $100K, and then award a $2M contract to someone to build 15 units of something that is supposed to cost less than $10K each. Sounds like a whole lot of profit for whoever gets the manufacturing contract.
Have I read it wrong? It appears to me that the manufacturing contract is wholly uncoupled from the design teams.
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Moderator Comment by Roberto Navoni on May 26, 2011 at 8:41am -
Hi Doug,
is very similar to DarpaUrban Challange not so different :)
Best
Roberto
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Comment by Bart on May 26, 2011 at 8:41am -
This is always the dilemma of Science: everybody calls you strange/foolish/weird to chase a dream, but when a real solution is working the killing-boys are first to call in. Do we really want DIY-drones to hunt-find-kill the next Bin-laden-ace? Or for those who believe in that war: to hunt-find-kill the winner of the $100K so they won't have to actually give the money?
And yes i'm a bit over the top now, but it would be nice to have such a discussion. I for one don't want to participate in a military-UAV. That rescue-drone-competition sounds more like a right way to go.
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Developer Comment by John Arne Birkeland on May 26, 2011 at 8:49am -
I agree to much of this, but remember that the $10K is just the cost of the actual drone. First you have to define, refine and standardize a manufacturing process (those 15 are probably just an initial test batch). Big companies (like the military) are very picky about consistent manufacturing procedures and quality assurance. In addition you have documentation, certification, training , service and support and whatever else the military decide they need. In addition to equipment for manufacturing etc, all this is going to require lots and lots of man hours.
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Comment by Kevin Bouchard on May 26, 2011 at 9:31am -
Alright, sorry if my earlier comment sounded a bit aggressive.
Long story short, I once wanted to do military drone research "when I grew up" because the state-of-the-art was there, but after thinking about the topic for a long time, and staying informed of how those military drones were used, I ended up pledging to myself NOT to use my knowledge to help the US war effort. Military tech interests me as much as the next guy but I can't get behind it. Part of me was glad to see that rule about no military tech when I first came here a few months ago.
With that said, Chris explained his choice and I'm gonna respect that. I too am curious to see what will come out of this initiative.
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Developer Comment by Mark Colwell on May 26, 2011 at 9:32am -
Please read all regulations when joining.
You are releasing all rights to intellectual property, and must comply with ITAR and Munitions export laws.
I wish a non-military, non-governmental sponsor (Gates, Oracle, Google) would step up for a civilian use contest in USA for Drones and allow us to keep our property and rights!
I joined to see what develops, I will not compete or contribute.
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Moderator Comment by Morli on May 26, 2011 at 10:09am -
Doug is getting too close to plot!!! what shall / should ...... do to him?!!!!!
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Developer Comment by Mark Colwell on May 26, 2011 at 10:37am -
Converting Open source To Closed source systems should NOT cost 2 million, DARPA can do its own Google searches. Then hire a contractor to build the junk, just as China does now.
Most of my current hardware sources are Chinese, using USA designs.
They plan on testing winning design out of country, want to goto Afghanistan?
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