USAF announces Swarm and Search AI Challenge

25th January 2019 - 14:30 GMT | by The Shephard News Team

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The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), in collaboration with Wright Brothers Institute and University of Dayton Research Institute, have launched the ‘Swarm and Search AI Challenge: 2019 Fire Hack’.

The challenge intends to explore new, efficient and resilient ways to plan complex UAS search and rescue missions. The theme of the challenge revolves around mapping wildfires and assumes that improved mission planning and the ability to react to dynamic changes has the potential to minimise risk and save lives. Solutions resulting from the challenge may also apply to defence applications.

Teams will work remotely, via a closed, online collaboration platform to explore different fire-map scenarios using US Air Force licensed software. Once the top ten teams have been selected, an international competition will take place from March 29-31 in order to select the top three teams from the US and the UK.

The highest scoring solution will be showcased at the 2019 Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Conference and the UK Embassy Showcase in Washington, DC.

The AFRL and Dstl are taking the competition approach to find the best artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms that represent efficiency and resiliency.