Can ‘garage innovators’ transform military drone resupply? DARPA hopes so

And I've heard you say that every college, every school with aeronautics program should be submitting to you

And you're casting a really wide net here. I am. Yeah. And that goes back to the numbers

There are a lot of university programs out there, right? We also have a very short timeline for this

So that actually kind of helps with the academic year. We did put it in the summer so that we wouldn't be, you know, in an academic year as well

So we could have those people come out. But one of those barriers to entries was keeping the aircraft itself with all of its components below 55 pounds, which actually gets you into a supply chain that's affordable, right

So if we were to go to a hundred pound aircraft or something, that would take all of those garage inventors, the universities out of the competition

And those are the people that oftentimes come up with the most amazing ideas, right

They break the mold because they don't know what the mold is yet

Right. So that was one of the barriers to entry was keeping that down so that we could get everyone to come in and and show off their ideas

And then you've got this really eye catching six point five million dollar prize pot

How does that work? Yeah. So we've got it split down to first, second and third

Simply the person with the highest payload to weight ratio will win first place

if they get above the four to one payload to weight ratio, they'll get the full prize

So that's two and a half million for the first prize winner

If they get below the four to one, they'll get 50% of that. So we're really trying to incentivize people to push the boundaries, right

And to make sure. But in general, people are not competing for the four to one

They're competing against each other, right? It is a payload to weight ratio that you will be scored against your peers, the other competitors there

And then we have three subjective categories because the concept here, the idea that we're trying to do is to find that next generation

In aviation, there are multiple ways that you can fail. There are it is just known for this right You can cross a wire have an electrical problem The pilot can make you know flip the wrong switch There are many ways That doesn mean the idea is not good though right So what we did is we did three subjective categories and that is best aerodynamic

design, powertrain design, and then the most likely to succeed. And that one's really nebulous

right? But it's also, we realize that people are going to be or could be designing their aircraft

for this competition. So kind of like maybe like a NASCAR race

You design it to go left-hand turns, but it can't do anything else, right? That's not really what we're looking for

but it's a competition we expect at. So we also want to see that people are looking to the future

of actually designing something that is usable. And so that's why we have those three subjectives

So it's not just the four-to-one who can make the lightest and everything

Yes, that'll get you the first, second, or third prize, but it's also that innovation

that we're really trying to look for. Gotcha. Now, this is by no means a new challenge. We've known for years that there's this difficulty of payload to weight ratio with the assistance. So why, in terms of the technology, the landscape, what you're seeing out there is now the right time to get out to this kind of competition

So we, I'll take you back a little bit of a history. So two years ago, when I came to DARPA

this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to do some heavy lift to help out with the logistics problem

I was able to talk to universities, individuals and companies and say, what do you have that's not

a helicopter, right? What are your ideas? Or a blimp, because a lot of people want to go to

lighter than air for your heavier stuff. And I started really being able to see that. I put out

we, DARPA, put out an RFI, a request for information on sam.gov, and we got some really

really interesting stuff. And what that led us to was that there, you know, sam.gov is only read by

so many people, and they're kind of the traditionals that we see. So who else was thinking

right And I knew that from our market research that people were thinking of it So So we put out so we decided to do this make it open right Make it big have an incentive with the prize have an incentive also with the venue So it open to the public

So this is not a closed event, which a lot of things are. And where is this venue, by the way

Yeah. So right now we're still in works with the Air and Space Museum at Dayton, Ohio

right pat so we haven't finalized that but we are looking to that as our primary location so

an amazing venue um if you've ever been there the museum is really really great and then so far

right pat has been amazing to work with and they have they have history in aviation as well they

they've been there since the beginning and so this is a great place we believe to to do the

next generation, the future as well. So these conversations have been happening for a while

What about the technological landscape? Yeah. So we looked into a couple of things

and what we believe right now is that there's a convergence of a couple of capabilities that

allow your universities and your garage innovators, whereas 10, maybe 20 years ago

this kind of a challenge wouldn't have the impact. So one of them is flight controls. So flight

controls have been around for a while. The big companies have made aircraft that aren't

aerodynamically stable fly, right? But that was a domain specific to those large companies

Now with drones, that software, whether it's open source or available, it's anyone can do it

Anybody can make it and tune it. And we've seen that. There's so many YouTube videos out there

of guys doing some really awesome stuff. So that's one. It's become part of the masses

Another one is manufacturing. So with 3D printing and others, you have the ability not only to make

something that couldn't have been made before, but make something in your garage that could have

only been made by a large corporation. And then powertrains is another one. You know, the electrical

world is getting a lot of attention but underneath there is the small engine work that is happening as well So there been some amazing leaps in those capabilities as far as size and weight Can you give some examples

So that actually from the hobby world has been really cool. So your RC cars

your little nitro engines and things like that, there's some amazing developments with those that

have made them so much more powerful than they used to be just about 10 years ago and lighter

and smaller. So that kind of a capability can really revolutionize what you do with an airborne

platform, right? So another one is a lot of design of what you see right now in vertical lift aviation

is a relic of the first guy to fly a helicopter. So Sikorsky VS-300 way back in the day, and that

had to be designed around the human, right? So not only the human had to have the ability to control

it, but also he had to survive it, right? His own physiological conditions. So we see that

that helicopters have stayed with that, even though, you know, autonomy has come out and

different stuff. So really what we want to see is people breaking that status quo, breaking that

mold. What can we do now with designs that could have never been done because a human was inside

Right. So now that convergence of all those things, there's another one with CAD

Right. So you can build something computer aided design. Computer aided design. And then modeling and sim

So you used to only have the software to design something at a large corporation

And then you had to put it in a wind tunnel, which was very cost prohibitive

Right. To see if it could fly. All of that has really been democratized now

You can get a subscription and you can do that now at home, which is what you're seeing people do on YouTube and other places

Right. It's amazing. So all of that means that for the first time, we believe that all of these have come together to where you can have a really wide swath of the American public try something and succeed where they couldn't have before

And that's some of the technological reasons why we think this will be successful in my, you know, maybe 10 years ago, it couldn't have been done