NXP HoverGames3: Land, Sky, Food Supply

The challenge

This contest will officially launch in Fall 2022.

Pre-register now to stay up to date with all communications before the launch.

NXP HoverGames Challenge 3: Land, Sky, Food Supply

The NXP HoverGames is back with another challenge – and this time, it’s all about sustainable food production. We’ve had some amazing ideas in our first two years, solving issues in firefighting and pandemics with drones, so what can you come up with now?

Humanity’s growth and success over the last few thousand years is arguably due to our ability to feed ourselves. Whether it’s farming, hunting, fishing, or another source of food, we have been able to manage food ecosystems around the world.

But our world’s population is still growing fast, and hundreds of millions of people already go hungry, while habitats are destroyed for agriculture – can we claim success when children are still not getting enough to eat? While we need more food, we must also ensure that food and farming is not damaging our environment, with greenhouse gas reduction a priority.

Whether it’s shifting cultivation in the tropics, fish farming, commercial grain farming in Europe, or tea plantations in Asia and Latin America –we need to make all the different types of farming, food production and its supply chain as efficient as possible, without damaging habitats and the diversity of nature. We also need to meet new demands for organic, cruelty-free food, while taking into account the millions of people who rely on the food industry for their incomes.

Technology will be essential in meeting all these challenges.

Because of this, we’re focusing on sustainable food ecosystems for the third NXP HoverGames. We need you and your ideas – show us how drones and rovers can make our food ecosystem more sustainable!

Of course, it’s not just about farming: we still get much of our food from fishing, which represents 17% of the current global production of edible meat, as well as from gathering or hunting wild plants and animals. Invertebrates are also on the menu: we get honey from bees, and eating insects is popular in many countries.

In today’s ecosystems, money has become the most important criterion. Corn may grow in my neighborhood but sold in China, while shrimp are fished in Europe’s North Sea, but peeled in North Africa. Farming has become more efficient, but with a focus on monoculture that can harm wildlife. The balance has shifted too far, and we have an unsustainable system – how can technology help us fix it?

WHAT WILL YOU ENABLE YOUR NXP HOVERGAMES DRONE TO DO?

A famous pioneer, Neil Armstrong, once said: "Science is about what is, and engineering is about what can be." Show us what the food production of the future can be, and how autonomous drones and rovers can get us there.

Your challenge is to come up with innovative ways to use drones and rovers in sustainable food production. Feel free to interpret this quite broadly – you could go for anything that supports sustainable food production, in conventional agriculture, aquaculture or new areas such as vertical farming. Your application could be in a desert, over the oceans, or in the tropical rain forest. Or you could focus on our changing climate and how it might affect food production, or look at how we can better protect animals and insects, and maintain biodiversity.

Your NXP HoverGames vehicle should be able to carry out its mission as autonomously as possible, with the help of your code. Your drone or rover could, for example, fly or drive across fields of crops looking for damage or unusual growth that might indicate pests or disease, and only report back to its human operator when it sees something wrong.

We’d like you to bear in mind the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development goals, which aim to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. We’re looking for ideas that could help the environment, as well as giving a boost to the food production industry.

TECH YOU'LL USE

You can choose between the NXP HoverGames drone development kit and all-new NXP HoverGames Rover. The NXP Mobile Robotics kits are modular, open development platforms using reliable automotive and industrial-grade components from NXP. You can experiment with additional hardware components from NXP and other providers – you are only bound by your own creativity. And your drone or rover will be PX4-enabled, the largest commercially deployed open-source stack worldwide with business-friendly licensing.

The drone kit contains:

• Strong, rigid lightweight carbon fiber quadcopter frame with platform, mounting rails, landing gear, motor controllers, motors and props
• Telemetry radio and remote control (RC) radio
• Vehicle Management Unit (RDDRONE-FMUK66 FMU) that’s supported by the open-source PX4 flight stack on top of NuttX RTOS.

The rover kit contains:

• High-tech platform for mobile robotics built on top of a WLToys 12409 chassis
• All necessary components such as a motor, ESC, servo and GPS
• Vehicle Management Unit (RDDRONE-FMUK66 FMU) that’s supported by the opensource PX4.org flight stack on top of NuttX RTOS.

PLUS: NXP NAvQPlus Edge compute board with vision and neural-net acceleration

All contestants applying successfully for hardware will get the NXP NavQPlus Mission Computer

• i.MX 8M Plus application processor with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) operating at up to 2.3 TOPS. ​
• Dual MIPI-CSI cameras with dual ISPs. Hardware accelerated multimedia capabilities including 1080p60 h.264/h.265 video encode and decode ​
• 1000Base-TX Gb Ethernet with IX industrial connectors
• Dual CAN-FD​
• Dual USB-C 3.1​
• WiFi 5 / BTLE 5.0​
• Linux Ubuntu/Yocto, ROS/ROS2, FastRTPS, OpenCV​
• SE050 Edgelock secure element with NFC interface​

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST ...

Change! See complete contest rules. And, last but not least: stay safe and healthy! If there is a public health crisis in your area, respect social distancing rules and don’t put your health or anyone else’s at risk in order to test and develop your NXP HoverGames entry.

Prizes

Contest is in Pre-Registration

10 winners

There will be lots of prizes!

Judges

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