Hot on the heels of today's DARPA announcement of Lift Challenge 2.0 (yes, they're officially doing another one, which we suggested they do in our recent article), this week's Inside Electronics episode has guest host and Electronic Design Technology Editor Andy Turudic sitting down with DARPA’s Lift Challenge Program Manager, Philip “Donna” Smith, and Science and Engineering Technical Advisor SETA) for DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, Ed Marin. We unpacked the dramatic innovation that was motivated by the recently wrapped up DARPA Lift Challenge 1.0.

Designed to break records in economic and operational payload-to-weight barriers for vertical lift aviation, the high-stakes competition offered $6.5M in prizes. It challenged teams to design lightweight aircraft capable of lifting payloads of over 4X their unladen weight (watch the video version of this podcast, expected later this week, to catch high-resolution flight footage and breakdown diagrams of the competing aircraft). 

Smith and Marin share how they took the program from uncovering "customer" problems, gaining executive approval, and successfully managing a challenge program with execution in just 11 months. The DARPA Lift Challenge (1.0) set up a demanding 1,100-ft. course at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. The flyoff week had close to 300 staff and volunteers, to push small-scale, heavy-lift innovation to its absolute limits.

We break down the highs and the lows of the competition and uncover exclusive, behind-the-scenes facts, analyses, and commentary that won't be found elsewhere in a fun, engineers-having-a-beer, discussion style. 

If you want to learn how to seed and nurture innovation in your organization from product concept all the way through debug and fault-finding on a short timeline, this podcast is a worthwhile listen. 

Unscripted, unplugged, and no question or comment off limits, you'll be listening to engineers and program managers talking the language you want to hear. We also covered a topic that was unspeakable last week: "What's next?". We recorded it under mutual agreement not to disclose the content until today's DARPA announcement — there will be a second DARPA Lift Challenge (see Andy's article). 

We wanted to get last week's Zoom call out for our readers to have a listen in time to help  digest today's announcement. We're going to have very unique, super-detailed video on the Lift Challenge 1.0, with video content from The Challenge, that meshes perfectly with the analysis in the audio, coming out in a few days. Stay tuned via our "Automotive Electronics" and our "Electronic Design Today" newsletters that appear in your inbox. Or just visit electronicdesign.com, daily, as part of your morning coffee routine.

Enjoy,

—andyT