First Responder UAS Indoor Triple Challenge Coming to Kansas State, Salina

Kansas State University in Salina, Kansas has been chosen to host the live portion of First Responder Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Triple Challenge competition on 2 June 2023. The Capital Consulting Corporation in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are the main partners of the challenge which will award over $680,000 in prizes.

The overall mission is to ‘support the first responder community and help save lives’, and the scenario presented is one in which first responders need to conduct a response and rescue effort within an indoor facility, hence a UAS that could maneuver within a closed space would be beneficial. The application window, stage 1, opened on 27 April 2022, and will close on 15 July 2022, there are additional stages involving solution description, design-build-evaluation, design, build-evaluation, and finally the live test-evaluation in June.

The challenge website offers tips and suggestions for contestants regarding things they can be working on during the stages so that they can develop a winning submission. Last year’s challenge had a total prize money of $720k, so this year is a little richer, and as before, the prizes in the final round are higher than the initial ones! See FMI links for details.

FMI: https://firstresponderuaschallenge.org, https://k-state.edu, https://nist.gov