Palmer Lackey’s eyes light up and she speaks at a mile a minute when discussing her company’s new recruiting event, the AI Grand Prix.
This is a unique drone flight contest. Instead of humans operating the drones, the drones need to operate autonomously. Humans will be tested on their skills in writing the software that allows drones to outperform their competitors.
Prizes range from a $500,000 pot divided among the highest-scoring teams to jobs at Anduril and the chance to bypass the company’s standard hiring cycle.
“This was something we decided to do,” Anduril founder Lucky told TechCrunch in an interview. Lackey and his team were meeting to discuss recruiting strategy, he recalled.
Someone suggested sponsoring a drone racing tournament, which was somewhat consistent with the company’s previous marketing strategy. For example, Anduril is a sponsor of the NASCAR Cup Series race known as the Anduril 250.
Lucky generally liked the idea, but then said, “’Guys, it would be really stupid for Anduril to be a sponsor. This pitch was that we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even need them,” he recalls, adding, “What we really need to do is sponsor a race for programmers and engineers to see how far they can make drones fly autonomously.”
After discovering that no such event existed, the company decided to create one in-house. Interestingly, however, Lackey pointed out that the AI Grand Prix team will not be flying an Anduril drone, but one developed by another defense technology startup, Neros Technologies. Lackey said Anduril’s drones are physically too large to operate on the enclosed course in Ohio, where the finals will be held.
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“We talked about having teams use Anduril drones, but Anduril doesn’t make drones of the ultra-fast, very small nature that a drone racing league would need. Most are larger,” he said.
Anduril is partnering with JobsOhio as well as one of the established racing leagues, the Drone Champions League, to run the event. The final race will be held in Ohio, where Anduril’s main manufacturing facility is located.
Lucky is clearly excited about how fun the event will be, but he has no intention of becoming a racer himself. “I’m definitely in,” he says, “but it’s going to be a competition to see who can build the best software to fly the drones.”
He smiled and said, “I’m actually not a very good software programmer. I’m more of a hardware guy. I’m an electromechanical and optical guy, and I know enough about coding to piece something together in a way that’s suitable for prototyping.”
(Luckey calls Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf “our de facto lead software brain.”)
The founders hope for at least 50 teams and said they already have interest from several universities. If the competition is successful, the company plans to expand to races with other types of self-driving cars.
“We’re starting with quadcopter racing drones, and that’s what people expect from drone racing. But in the future, we want to apply AI racing to other platforms as well,” he said.
Underwater AI races, ground AI races, and even spaceship AI races were some of the ideas Lucky shared.
This competition is open to all international participants, except for Russian teams.
“The difference with Russia is that they are actively engaged in acts of aggression in Europe,” he said.
The concern is that people eligible to participate in these races may be serving in their country’s armed forces. “Everyone wants to participate, but we are not the Olympics,” he added.
Lackey said this tournament follows the World Cup, which excluded Russia.
Interestingly, teams from China (the home of autonomous engineering) have been welcomed, even though the country is often cited by US autonomous weapons hawks as the object of their greatest fears.
If the Chinese team wins, it is not a given that they will get a job at Anduril, which manufactures weapons used by the US military. “If you work for the Chinese military, you are not allowed to work for Anduril,” Lackey said. He noted that specific laws apply. In fact, there will still be several interviews and qualification screenings for all job seekers.
Competition will take place over three qualifying rounds starting in April, with the final Grand Prix race scheduled for November.
