Lift Challenge

What better place to showcase aviation history in the making than at the world's largest military aviation museum! | 0:30

Novel Drone Designs Lift Beyond Limits

DARPA Challenges incentivize researchers from across academia, government, commercial, and defense communities to develop non-traditional or unexpected solutions to grand national security challenges, through cash prizes. Prizes encourage thinking outside the box and broad participation by attracting a wide array of potential solvers to tackle a problem, rather than just the usual experts in a given field.

What’s the Lift Challenge?

As military missions become more complicated, warfighters need more capable drones to use across diverse scenarios. The same applies to infrastructure inspection, package delivery, disaster response, and other civilian applications.

Current multirotor drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), are simple, affordable, and easy to operate. But their payload-to-weight ratio is low, typically 1:1 or less.

The DARPA Lift Challenge aims to shatter the heavy-lift bottleneck by seeking novel drone designs capable of carrying payloads more than four times their weight. This would revolutionize how we use drones across all sectors.

By offering $6.5 million in prize money, the Lift Challenge seeks to incentivize university researchers, independent innovators, and industry to set a new standard in vertical lift performance.

Teams will compete on the grounds of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, from Aug. 2-9. DARPA will open up the event to the public from Aug. 6-9.