Jane Edwards
Boeing and NATO launched a three-month innovation challenge that allowed participants from universities in the Netherlands to propose concepts for autonomous systems designed to help the alliance improve situational awareness and address other pressing needs.
“Project X sets a benchmark for new and creative ways to engage academia and industry and help Allies develop and adopt emerging technologies at the speed of relevance,” Robert Weaver, deputy assistant secretary general for defense investment at NATO, said in a statement published Monday.
Under Project X, two competing teams – Monarch and Alpha – demonstrated their concepts at an event hosted by Netherlands-based technology incubator Unmanned Valley in May.
Team Alpha emerged as the winner of the Project X prototyping competition for designing a multiagent drone platform, which involves unmanned aerial vehicles to identify, verify and address targets of interest using the concept of egoistic altruism and multiple intelligence assets.
Team Monarch presented a three-level network of UAVs that can perform autonomous inspection of hazardous areas, prioritize drone positioning and assess risks to support surveillance, disaster management, search and rescue and other missions.
