Elphel Inc. won the Urban Air Mobility Challenge on September 28th at the Defense TechConnect Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C. This challenge was highly competitive with nineteen finalists selected to present to a panel of government and industry expert judges. Out of 800 submissions looking to participate in the challenges, approximately 200 were chosen to showcase their technologies with 100 selected to pitch in one of the six prize challenges. Elphel Inc. founder, Olga Filippova, delivered a strong pitch presentation to the panel of government and industry expert judges and won the prize challenge.
Urban Air Mobility Challenge winners received membership to the Vertical Lift Consortium (VLC) and non-dilutive funds to advance their technology. In addition, start-ups and small businesses were able to get their ideas in front of key decision-makers. Federal agencies and corporate/investment buyers were all in attendance to see these cutting-edge technologies. Olga and co-founder, Andrey Filippov, had an opportunity to meet with various contractors and government agencies to discuss their technology at the summit.
Elphel worked with the Utah Innovation Center for their Challenge Pitch and their SBIR submissions as well. The company won three SBIR Phase I awards and one Phase II award from the U.S. Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Center is proud to support Elphel Inc. and is excited by the company’s success.
Urban Air Mobility Challenge Topics:
Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing
Innovative Power Generation & Storage
Data & Systems Situational Management
Autonomous & Collaborative Technologies
Innovative Air Mobility Capabilities & Applications
About Elphel Inc.
Elphel was founded in 2001 to design and manufacture high-performance Free Software and Open Hardware cameras. Elphel developed a highly flexible machine vision platform that integrates various sensors, such as visible range and thermal image sensors, GPS and IMU, creating precisely synchronized multi-view camera systems.
Elphel invented a novel method to improve 3D thermal imaging contrast over an order of magnitude to revolutionize thermal imaging and enable long-range 3D perception with uncooled Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) sensors. This technology allows for robust long-range day/night all-weather 3D perception for Air Mobility operations.