Since last month’s launch of Minderoo’s XPrize Wildfire, a four-year global competition that will award $16 million in prize money to teams able to demonstrate fully autonomous capabilities to detect and extinguish wildfires, 68 teams have registered to compete from 14 countries, including three from Australia.
In the same period, Australia’s major science and research groups have publicly called for the government to back a “Grand Challenge” approach to identifying and backing new national science priorities. Suggested challenges include Australia becoming a clean energy superpower and having the healthiest population on earth.
“Focused and talented teams in pursuit of a prize and acclaim can change the world,” says Peter Diamandis, the entrepreneur who runs the XPrize Foundation, the biggest global brand in designing and operating large-scale incentive prizes. It has awarded more than USD150 million in prize money in the last two decades. Teams have solved challenges in fields as diverse as space, genomics; ocean (oil spill) clean up, and artificial intelligence.
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