EDA has issued a call for applications from parties interested in participating in the third edition of the ‘EDA Defence Innovation Prize’ contest rewarding companies and research entities who come up with innovative and ground-breaking technologies, products, processes or services applicable in the defence domain.
The area that has been selected for this year innovation prize is “AI applications for defence” and will include:
- Supporting decision-making tools in command and control
- Improve intelligence gathering and processing of information to improve the common operational picture
- Supporting the autonomy of unmanned systems
- Demonstrating the efficient use of AI in combination with 5G and Internet of Things
The winning idea/concept will be worth 30,000€
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is recognised as a disruptive technology with potentially revolutionary effects already in the short term.
Even though civil applications and commercial producers are the main drivers behind the Artificial Intelligence evolution, Ministries of Defence and armed forces do not ignore the potential benefits of using these technologies to improve European defence capabilities.
Against this backdrop, contesters for this EDA Defence Innovation Prize are expected to propose ideas or concepts which, if implemented between now and 2035, would help improve and enhance specific EU defence capabilities.
No specific defence background is required to participate in the contest which is open to innovators from ALL types of industries and research institutions in Europe: defence & civil/commercial producers, large companies & SMEs, defence-related & civil research communities. Applications from dual-use and civil/commercial innovators and researchers are even particularly encouraged.
The rules of the contest and the criteria for participation are available here.
Deadline for submissions: 30 August 2019 (5pm Brussels time).
Information on how to apply can be found in the contest documentation under the link above.
The prize winners will be notified not later than October 2019. An EDA Defence Innovation Prize award ceremony is scheduled to take place at the 2019 EDA Annual Conference in Brussels.
Status of the 2nd edition of the EDA innovation
The selection committee of the 2nd EDA Innovation prize, after a thorough evaluation of the submitted project ideas, decided not to award the prize to any of the participating project ideas. The reasoning behind this decision of the selection committee wasn’t because of the quality or merit of the submitted ideas but due to the fact that none of them could demonstrate a clear contribution of the project idea to a defence problem.
More information: