DARPA Home made drone competition crashes and burns- literally

DARPA launched "UAVForge" in an attempt for ordinary people and teams to design and build a backpack sized UAV capable of taking off vertically, perch on a structure, and dodge obstacles. That was their plan anyway. The reality didn't turn out so well.

Over 140 teams, and 3,500 people from around the world submitted designs, and voted for their favorite designs. Nine finalists were assembled at Fort Stewart in Georgia, for a "fly off" competition, to determine who would win the $100,000 prize. Of the nine teams, which cost anywhere from $2,000 to just under $10,000, one crashed and burst into flame, three crashed into trees, one ended up in a lake, and the rest suffered from other mishaps and hard landings.

Flying robots sat out bad weather or found creative ways to crash in their failed mission to win the U.S. military's $100,000 prize for a homegrown drone.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched its "UAVForge" competition as an experiment to see if the do-it-yourself spirit of the crowd could design, build and fly a backpack-size drone for scouting tomorrow's battlefields. DARPA wanted the drones to show that they could take off vertically, land on a structure for a "perch-and-stare" mission like overgrown robot insects, and nimbly dodge obstacles.

More than 140 teams and 3,500 individuals from around the world submitted drone designs online and voted for their favorite ideas. But none of the nine finalist teams that flew their robots at a "fly-off event" at Fort Stewart in Georgia ended up claiming the prize.

news.yahoo.com...

You don't say.

And here they were trying to find some genius to make a full proof drone.

What a bunch of suckers.

WOOO maybe our world is not going to look like half life after all.
I can only hope.

Not likely though, drones are still in development.

reply to post by Zaphod58


DARPA is one of the few Gov't agencies that actually encourages individual entrepreneurship. They are always asking people outside the military to come up with ideas and are willing to encourage them through financial gain.

Everything from uniforms, boots, MRE’s=, alternate energy sources, etc, etc.

And yes weaponry.

But many of these things come back to enhance our day to day lives.

I may not be smart enough to get in these games but I would volunteer to join the guys that test things in a heartbeat.

I'm good at breaking stuff, both intentional and unintentional.

If someone can come up with something that TDawg can't break, then we need to look into it further, even if it is expensive.

reply to post by TDawgRex

Agree completely. Its the competitive spirit and innovative skills that are harnessed and the hunger for success that keeps the industry and people on the technical edge all the while the remnants of it eventually pours into the civilian sector.

You have to start somewher - the robotic vehicle Grand challenge got off to a simlar shakey start, befoer 5 teams completed it successfully in year 2.

But trying, and failing if that's what happens, is how you learn.

Except on ATS of course