Will NIST be providing the command station in Stage 2 and 3?

No, NIST will not be providing the command station in these stages. You must provide the computer or resource to run the command server and the collection method on the UAV. NIST is not providing it in Stage 2 or 3. This component may be a laptop, computer, phone, cloud resource, etc. You may use any software or hardware on the command server as long as it can provide the evaluation requirements. For evaluation, you must collect two things from the drone: pictures and JSON data. The Stage 2 guidance document explains these tasks’ procedures in depth, so we strongly advise checking the Stage 2 guidance document as it details the requirements for submission and scoring. We are encouraging the creative display of sensor and drone photo data; however, for scoring criteria, you will just need to submit the number of data elements collected as JSON objects as well as the requested photo data.

The requirements for Stage 3 will be very similar to the Stage 2 tests, but the parameters regarding the collected sensor data will be more defined, and flight tests will be more demanding. You will be required to collect data from sensors that NIST deploys and deliver that data to a command center computer. Similarly, we will allow the use of your own computer as the command center but will require to deliver data in a similar format as Stage 2.