Seward Incorporated

In late November, Seward participated in the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 2011 Innovation Incubator Program. The program is designed to highlight innovative educational technology products and services, as well as be a vehicle for networking and collaboration. Our participation in this program got me thinking about innovation not only in the field of educational technology, but in general.

Recently, I came upon an article describing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) efforts to test one of their new technologies, an unmanned pod known as the Anti-Submarine Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), a surface vessel which would be used to track potentially hostile submarines. Central to ACTUV’s design is that it runs on software with artificial intelligence capabilities, as opposed to being “manned” by humans in remote locations. As a result, DARPA wanted to figure out just what tactics and strategies it should code into ACTUV’s software. Their solution? An open call to the public to play ACTUV Tactics Simulator (a modification of the existing game Dangerous Waters):

“You are invited to put yourself into the virtual driver’s seat of one of several ACTUV configurations and show the world how you can use its capabilities to follow a submarine. Of course you won’t be the only ship at sea so you’ll have to safely navigate among the commercial traffic, and the target sub has some tricks up his sleeve so watch out! Rack up points as you complete the mission objectives, and see how you stack up against the competition on our leaderboard page.”

As players completed various levels (or scenarios), DARPA requested that players submit their data. Data submission was voluntary and anonymous. In addition to the general public players, ACTUV’s project director Rob McHenry also enlisted a Navy officer expert to play the game—interestingly, the highest he placed on any leaderboard was 3^rd.

The ACTUV project is not DARPA’s first foray into using the public’s help in the research, development, and testing of its newest battlefield technologies. Other instances include UAVforge, the Shredder Challenge,  the Network Challenge (also known as the Red Balloon Challenge), and the DARPA Grand Challenge, later renamed the Urban Challenge.

In today’s technology-centered world, this method (often referred to as crowdsourcing) has become a popular way for companies to tap the public’s collective knowledge. As DARPA’s director Regina Dugan puts it: “You’re looking for the maximum number of folks who can contribute ideas to the process no matter where they come from.”

Also see:
Challenges.gov – The Federal Government’s crowdsourcing website
Crowdsourcing.org – This website is dedicated to all things crowdsourcing (and crowdfunding)

Sources:
The Anti-Sub Game – Fast Company
ACTUV Tactics Simulator Page - DARPA

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 10:09 am and is filed under Seward News, Technology. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: crowdsourcing, DARPA, innovation, R&D

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