The U.S. Army’s sole fundamental research laboratory and Berkeley Drone Technologies recently hosted the inaugural Multi-Drone Optimization Challenge for University of California, Berkeley and high school students at the university’s Richmond Field Station.
This challenge, also referred to as M-DOC, was funded by a grant awarded by the Army Educational Outreach Program, or AEOP, which offers the nation’s youth and teachers opportunities for meaningful, real-world STEM experiences, competitions and paid internships alongside U.S. Army researchers.
The advanced program guided students through the complete engineering lifecycle of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The curriculum covered a range of critical engineering topics, from advanced sensing to autonomous swarm software. Working collaboratively in teams, the students assembled, programmed and field-tested their own drones and drone swarms.
The workshop culminated in a challenge within the Richmond Field Station's airspace. During the challenge, participants built drones from preassigned kits and mapped designated zones. Teams then combined their individual drones into swarms to measure the multi-drone system mapping compared to single-drone operations, ultimately analyzing the trade-off economics of multi-drone deployments.
The M-DOC event highlights the power and impact of government-academia-industry partnerships, this specific one between the U.S Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory, Berkeley Drone Technologies and UAVs@Berkeley, the university's premier student drone club.
The Berkeley Drone Technologies group provided the core curriculum for the event, while the College of Engineering and Richmond Field Station leadership provided access to the 185-acre test facility. M-DOC equipment support was provided by Jack Russi, CEO of STOPFIRES, a California-based wildfire detection company.
The inspiration for utilizing the Richmond Field Station dates back to a previous leadership visit.
“Back in 2021, I took our then DEVCOM Deputy Commanding General to the Richmond Field Station where he observed a cooperative ARL and UC Berkeley drone flight test in a proxy dense wooded forest,” said Dr. Pete Khooshabeh, ARL West lead. “Since then, I have always been intrigued by this 185-acre space and its potential for outreach opportunities and larger-scale demos in their test facilities.”
This enduring interest led ARL to collaborate with Professor Tarek Zohdi, the Richmond Field Station director.
According to Khooshabeh, establishing this foundation is strategically important for the Department of War, as the Defense Hackathon Act for Fiscal Year 2024 requires each military service to host an annual hackathon, and ARL views this inaugural, hardware-focused challenge as a significant step toward meeting that directive.
“These grant opportunities are vital for expanding our reach to new student cohorts and key technical experts,” Khooshabeh said. “Executing this AEOP program alongside premier academic and industry partners at RFS establishes a powerful framework for future joint hackathons.”
Khooshabeh emphasized that ARL views this outreach as a vital long-term investment in our national security workforce.
“As these students advance in their academic careers, our goal is for them to secure prestigious fellowships like National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate and SMART scholarships,” he said. “This creates a direct pipeline for the nation's brightest minds to continue contributing to the Army's mission.”
Christian Brommer, postdoctoral researcher and Oak Ridge Associated Universities fellow at ARL, expanded on the importance of these events for students.
“As a postdoctoral researcher in aerial robotics, it was inspiring to see how students leveraged new technologies to achieve levels of integration that would normally take weeks,” Brommer said. “The event demonstrated that, provided with the right tools and expert guidance, students can unlock their potential and get first-stage prototypes off the ground quickly - quite literally in this case.”
DEVCOM ARL is the Army’s sole fundamental research laboratory serving as the nexus of science between the military, academia and industry. Operating under U.S. Army Futures and Concepts Command and the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command, ARL executes globally recognized research to accelerate delivery of war-winning, disruptive technologies for tomorrow’s Army.
For information, visit theArmy Research Laboratory website.
| Date Taken: | 08.05.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 08.05.2026 15:05 |
| Story ID: | 571599 |
| Location: | RICHMOND, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 96 |
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