What Happened
Revolutionizing Multirotor Drone Operations With Heavy Lifting
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is launching a new competition, Lift, to design unmanned systems that can carry heavy payloads, with the goal of revolutionizing multirotor drone operations. The competition, which will be held in the summer, aims to find drones that can carry up to four times their own weight, with a minimum payload of 110 pounds and a maximum weight of 55 pounds. Participants will be scored based on their payload-to-weight ratio, with prizes including $2.5 million for first place and $1.5 million for second place. According to Phillip Smith, DARPA’s lead for the Lift contest, the competition is not supposed to be easy but is theoretically possible, and could lead to breakthroughs in drone technology. The competition was first reported by Breaking Defense.