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DARPA Harnessing Crowd Wisdom to Develop New Perch and Stare UAVs

DAPRPA is seeking the wisdom of the crowds to innovate with new concepts for micro drones that will be able to perch and stare on the battlefield. Photo: DARPA

Different services of the U.S. military are working on different solutions providing persistent intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) supporting the warfighter with miniature autonomous vehicles designed for ‘Perch and Stare’ mission profile. One of the most mature programs, the Shrike recently unveiled by Aerovironment was developed under Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) funding to develop a Stealthy Persistent Perch and Stare (SP2S) capability. But Jim McCormick, a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believes that commercial off-the shelf (COTS) technology harnessed by the innovation of the ‘crowd’ could yield new capabilities that could benefit the warfighter even beyond these military funded programs. “we feel there is more potential there, and the current capability is still not ready for procurement. We hope that the crowd source will be able to overcome these barriers.” McCormick said, adding that 93 teams have already joined, some of them are foreign “Our focus is on innovation, regardless to where it comes from”.