For disaster-prone areas, fragile connectivity stays a significant downside, usually going offline in vital moments. Aerospace enterprises face an analogous problem when making an attempt to run constant high-altitude connectivity whereas working in distant areas, which may also be very costly. That is the place Challenge OWL comes into play: creating new applied sciences to assist tackle these challenges.
Fashioned in 2018 to compete within the inaugural Name for Code International Problem — which it received — Challenge OWL is a world crew of entrepreneurs targeted on creating radically cost-effective and straightforward to make use of aerospace applied sciences. In June, we took a significant step in our journey by conducting a collection of air sure assessments dubbed “SpaceDucks 3” in San Luis Obispo, CA. We’re happy to report that we efficiently launched six balloons, together with a bunch of 5 mesh SpaceDucks at one time.
We imagine these balloons could make a distinction throughout a pure catastrophe state of affairs (e.g., an earthquake, hurricane or wildfire), and once we can deploy our expertise to the skies and even area. This makes it simpler to hook up with the communities which have been devastated by catastrophe.
Our sensors are designed to be much less vulnerable to being destroyed as they sit far past the attain of hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes. This permits them to offer extra full, international connectivity and reduces the danger of being destroyed by all of the unhealthy issues that occur right here on earth’s floor.
How SpaceDucks 3 allows the way forward for catastrophe connectivity
There are enormous markets for aerospace expertise, to not point out the societal impression we are able to make offering distant or disaster-struck areas with fundamental, low value, easy communications when it’s wanted most. We’re creating options that we imagine can have a wide-ranging business and defense-focused impression on the world.
Collaboration was key throughout our mission. We have been accompanied by a full Cal Poly Analysis crew who assisted within the launch. We additionally labored with college students from The College of Texas at Dallas, and acquired help by our partnership with Raytheon Applied sciences. OWL has U.S. Air Pressure to thank as a part of the R&D funding as properly.
We efficiently accomplished our main purpose of creating community hyperlinks from the bottom to our air-bound SpaceDuck sensor, and again right down to a separate floor station. We coated 60 miles of whole distance at 90,000 ft altitude. In truth, considered one of OWL’s SpaceDucks, TARAQUR-1, broke our earlier altitude report and reached 91,863.5 ft.
IBM and the Name for Code crew have been key to fueling our firm’s progress by funding, the help of technical crew members and numerous assets over time. We have now been collaborating with IBM to make use of the IBM Watson Textual content to Speech Library for Embed. OWL used a cloud-based analytics dashboard, powered by IBM Watson, to intuitively observe and talk with the balloons whereas air-bound. The AI-powered chatbot was in a position to learn out the standing of the balloons all through the three-hour flights and preserve our crew knowledgeable.
OWL’s distinctive technical answer and problem-solving strategy
Comms tools that’s light-weight, simple to make use of and radically value efficient are all traits wanted throughout pure disasters. OWL might help enterprises management their purposes with a resilient community floating above our heads.
Throughout our take a look at, we proved 915mhz LoRa communications at excessive altitude on atmospheric climate balloons. Whereas doing so, we collected quite a lot of sensor knowledge — together with temperature, strain, altitude, humidity and accelerometers — and visible media for evaluation and publication.
Comply with together with OWL’s take a look at and journey
The expansion of the crew throughout OWL and our companions engaged on SpaceDucks has been sensational.
Sooner or later, our expertise may show you how to message a beloved one in a catastrophe state of affairs when different networks are down. We at the moment are one step nearer to creating that imaginative and prescient a actuality. We hope you’ll be part of us.
Be a part of the Challenge OWL group
