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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear RoboCup Community,</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">DARPA is kicking off a new AI-focused competition, called
the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2).<span>
</span>SC2 is <i>the world's first
collaborative machine-intelligence competition to overcome spectrum scarcity</i>.<span> </span>This new DARPA Grand challenge, which
champions a spectrum-sharing model for RF communications, comes at a time of
fast-growing demand for wireless services, which could soon overwhelm the
current, century-old practice of assigning users exclusive use of specific
frequencies.<span> </span>Current spectrum access
strategies avoid complex decision making of how best to use the spectrum by
allowing only a single homogeneous type of radio to use a particular
frequency.<span> </span>This practice, while
simplifying the radio design, results in a number of inefficiencies in the use
of the spectrum.<span> </span>SC2 seeks to foster an
alternate approach which asks the radios to handle the complexity of jointly
optimizing spectrum use amongst a diverse group of heterogeneous spectrum
users.<span> </span>This approach demands a new kind
of radio, one which is both collaborative and intelligent.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many of the core technical challenges and required skillsets
to tackle them overlap well with the RoboCup Community.<span> </span>For example, distributed decision making,
handling dynamic environments, and acting in real-time. Chief among them
however, is the unsolved core problem of collaborative decision making, amongst
a set of heterogeneous actors, towards a common goal.<span> </span>This is somewhat analogous to the concept of
a “pickup game” in soccer.<span> </span>Deciding who
is best suited for which position, how to coordinate your actions towards the
team objective, and adapt the ensemble in spite of their different reasoning
engines are all questions that apply directly to the SC2 problem.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The competition will unfold in three year-long phases
beginning in 2017 and finishing, for those teams that rank among the best at
the two Preliminary Events, in a high-profile Championship Event in late 2019.
The team whose advanced, software-defined radios (an RF technology that provides
the necessary agility in changing waveforms) collaborate most effectively with
a diversity of simultaneously operating radios in a manner that optimizes
spectrum usage for the entire communicating ensemble will walk away with a
grand prize of $2 million. The teams that rank as the second and third best
collaborators will take home $1 million and $750,000, respectively.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The RoboCup community is strongly encouraged to get involved
in this competition. Your skills and knowledge are invaluable to tackling this
emerging real-world problem, with broad impact to our everyday lives.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All the details can be found on our website: <a href="http://www.SpectrumCollaborationChallenge.com">SpectrumCollaborationChallenge.com</a>
or by contacting the SC2 team at: <a href="mailto:sc2@darpa.mil">sc2@darpa.mil</a>.
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