Automotive and military enthusiasts! Gearheads and engineers! The Pentagon’s far-out research division wants to put you to the test. There’s cold, hard cash in it for you.
Darpa announced today that it’ll give $10,000 to whomever comes up with the best design for new “Combat Reconnaissance and Combat Delivery & Evacuation” vehicles. Welcome to the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle Design Challenge, or XC2V, conducted in partnership with Local Motors, a company that’s the automotive equivalent of a microbrew.
Entrants have to meet a few specific requirements: use Local Motors’ “tubular steel chassis with existing GM LS3 V8 powertrain” — the metal latticework pictured above — and carry up to five passengers, including up to three people lying down. (This is medevac, after all.) It’s got to carry up to 1200 pounds and tow up to 4000. Apart from that, go wild. You want the thing to fly? Well, get on that.
This is hardly Darpa’s first competitive crowdsourcing. In 2007, a Carnegie Mellon team won its Urban Challenge, a race to develop an autonomous car.
And Darpa’s big into oddball designs for new vehicles. The Transformer mashes up a plane, a helicopter and a Humvee for the same combat delivery/recon/medevac missions listed in the challenge.
That might be by design. In the announcement unveiling the XC2V, Darpa laments that “from concept to construction current military vehicle manufacturing processes take several years.” Crowdsourcing the design could lead to a “more efficient process” and “save lives and improve mission success.”
Anyone interested in the challenge has until March 3, 2011 to submit their designs. Until then, Darpa will be stuck with boring ol’ helo-Humvee-planes. LINK
Image: Local Motors
Posts
