NIWC Pacific announces AI Tracks at Sea challenge winners

Courtesy Photo | The text top reads "Challenge.gov"; logos in middle represent NIWC Pacific & AI Tracks at Sea; text bottom reads "Government Challenges, Your Solutions" Artificial intelligence (AI) is represented by imagery of an eye and brain while an octant, a tool used to calculate latitude at sea by measuring the angle between the sun and the horizon, represents the naval or "at sea" portion of the challenge.  

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

02.03.2021

Story by Jaime Ciciora 

Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific

Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific and the Naval Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Coordination Office, managed by the Office of Naval Research, have announced winners for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tracks at Sea challenge. The challenge asked collegiate teams to submit their solutions for artificial intelligence and software that could track maritime vessel traffic.

The $200,000 prize was distributed among five winning teams, which submitted full working solutions, and three runners-up, which submitted partial working solutions. The monetary prize will be awarded to the school the corresponding team attends:

First winner, CREDIT, $55,000, Prairie View A&M University
Second winner, ASG Auto, $45,000, Florida Agricultural Mechanical University-Florida State University (FAMU-FSU) College of Engineering
Third winner, AiDA, $35,000, University of West Florida
Fourth winner, TrojanOne, $30,000, Virginia State University
Fifth winner, Argo Tracks, $20,000, University of West Florida
First runner-up, The Huskies, $6,000, Michigan Technological University
Second runner-up, 510 Captains, $6,000, Christopher Newport University
Third runner-up, AIMS Lab, $3,000, Purdue University

Teams participating in the AI Tracks at Sea Challenge spanned collegiate institutions from coast to coast, from both public and private colleges and universities. Collectively, the student submissions for the challenge represent various types of STEM research institutions, Ivy League Schools, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Hispanic Serving Institutes (HSI). Of the challenge teams, 26% were comprised of students from HBCUs and 16% of the teams attend HSIs.

“With 94% of the competitors attending colleges and universities outside of California, this challenge served as an effective forum to make broader impacts in STEM,” said Yolanda Tanner, Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) STEM Federal Action Officer and NIWC Pacific Internship and Fellowship project manager. “It was also a means by which students could further develop their STEM skills while working collaboratively to solve a real-world naval problem.”

Florida, North Carolina, and Texas had the largest population of participating collegiate teams.

You can read more about the AI Tracks at Sea challenge here: https://www.challenge.gov/challenge/AI-tracks-at-sea/

To conduct interviews with subject matter experts, please contact Jim Fallin, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs director, at [e-mail] or [phone].

NIWC Pacific’s mission: To conduct research, development, engineering, and support of integrated command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber, and space systems across all warfighting domains, and to rapidly prototype, conduct test and evaluation, and provide acquisition, installation, and in-service engineering support.

• Date Taken: 02.03.2021
• Date Posted: 02.03.2021 22:08
• Story ID: 388322
• Location: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, US