DARPA held the second trial in January this year and pitted the participants’ greatly improved algorithms against AI opponents developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Both trials were personally hosted by the APL.
The third trial will also be streamed from the APL, with eight teams flying against the lab’s AI adversary algorithms on the first day and then against each other in a round robin tournament on the second. It’s the first time participants have pitted their AIs against each other in public. On the final day, the top four AIs will compete in a one-time elimination tournament for the championship title. The final team standing will then have the opportunity to fly against an Air Force fighter pilot controlling a virtual aircraft.
Col. Dan “Animal” Javorsek, Program Manager at DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said in a statement:
‘Whether man or machine wins the definitive dogfight, the AlphaDogfight Trials are all about increasing confidence in AI. If the champion AI deserves the respect of an F-16 pilot, we will come one step closer to an effective team of human machines in air combat, which is the goal of the ACE program. ”
Teams from Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Heron Systems, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI and SoarTech form the eight participants for trial 3. Interested viewers must pre-register to vote: US citizens have until August 17 to sign up, while everyone else has until August 11.
