82 Insight | Uncrewed platform development funding As of writing, 174 teams were listed at herox.com/goaero, with stage one submissions closing on December 11, 2024. The competition was open to designs from everywhere on Earth, and from startups, individuals at universities or established companies. GoAERO and its networks welcomed an abundance of potentially optimal solutions for all the different emergency response use-cases that exist. “In addition to the over $2.5 m in funding prizes, teams will keep their own IP, because we want everyone to be able to build and sell their aircraft to save lives afterwards,” Lighter says. “Whether in designing, prototyping or optimising their flight operation concepts, teams can also get one-on-one advice from our dozens of great mentors across aerospace and first response. “Those include Dan Ateya, managing director at RTX Ventures, who has previously worked at the US Naval Research Laboratory, and co-authored numerous articles on sensors and advanced materials in peer-reviewed journals, or Ramy Mourad, Boeing’s director of engineering for urban air mobility, who has provided an expert lecture on how to expertly build a safe aircraft in a very short length of time, or guys like Tom Judge and John Everlove, who have decades of service, leadership and awards in emergency response work.” GoAERO is presently supported by several dozen aerospace and emergency response organisations, including Boeing, Honeywell, NASA, the Air Medical Operators Association, SAE International, and the International Association of Emergency Managers. Artificial general intelligence Meanwhile, Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO of the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance and founder of SingularityNET, a decentralised AGI (artificial general intelligence aimed at mimicking human cognition) platform firm, is offering more than $1 m in funding grants at https://deepfunding.ai/all-rfps/ to developers with ideas for advancing the use of AI for the benefit of humans. Such ideas worthy of application include those from AI developers whose innovations stand to make uncrewed systems safer, smarter or more sustainable for humankind, and also those from uncrewed system developers using autonomy in beneficial operations. “As one example of the former, a partner of ours, PureCipher, is currently patenting a method for AI-powered, noise-based computations that can be used to control an uncrewed vehicle,” says Matt Ikle, chief science officer at SingularityNET, who oversees some of the funding proposals. “That puts a whole new layer of security on top of typical uncrewed operations by further encrypting a drone or robotic vehicle’s control network and any sensitive onboard information from security threats or unauthorised access. “On the latter front, I’ve worked extensively with Arizona State University on proof-of-concepts for scalably monitoring carbon sequestration in agriculture, and UAVs could definitely be used there as a survey platform, carrying sensors for measuring biological and chemical indicators in that type of climate science work.” Ikle and SingularityNET work with universities and other organisations through which many innovations for humanitarian or sustainable uncrewed systems have been presented, often originating from non-vehicular use-cases. Much of PureCipher’s prior r&d, for instance, has focused on homomorphic encryption for protecting sensitive data environments, such as in finance or health industries. From SingularityNET’s perspective, such encryption could also protect bodies of training data for self-driving vehicles or maritime searchand-rescue UAVs from being hacked, corrupted or contaminated. “We’re open to all kinds of ideas, originating from any country or industry. For instance, I live in a very remote location, surrounded by 4000 m peaks, and I’m an avid skier. I’ve recently spoken with students interested in engineering UAVs for flying and functioning well at such altitudes, where aerodynamics and certain electronic instruments often become less able,” Ikle says. “Those could survey for water content in snowpacks and other topological qualities, as well as helping to find avalanche victims or measuring for predictive indicators of avalanches to come.” Ikle and his colleagues also work with probabilistic logic networks, which are used as uncertain reasoning systems. Jointly with Arizona State University, they December/January 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Just as Mayflower used a fintech tool to train its USV’s navigational AI, so is SingularityNET funding various ways in which AI technologies can do good in the world (Image courtesy of Mayflower)
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