The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has teamed up with the U.S. Geological Survey to look at the potential role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in accelerating assessments of critical minerals and launched a competition in support of the effort.
DARPA said Monday it will collaborate with USGS, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Mitre on the AI for Critical Mineral Assessment Competition, which will feature the Map Georeferencing Challenge and Map Feature Extraction Challenge.
“The USGS’s critical mineral resource assessments are at the heart of our domestic supply and production of critical minerals,” said Anne Fischer, deputy director of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.
“We want to have a measurable, immediate impact on the USGS’s ability to reach some of its objectives, especially in ways that are critical to national security,” added Fischer.
DARPA opened the registration for the first challenge on Monday, Aug. 15, with plans to kick off the second challenge on Aug. 29.
The agency will award $10,000 for the top prize, $3,000 for the second and $1,000 for the third prize of each competition in October.