The Flying Donkey Challenge is an escalating series of sub-challenges held annually in Africa. World-leading roboticists, engineers, regulators, entrepreneurs, logisticians, and designers will win substantial grants by advancing the safety, durability, legality, profitability and friendliness of cargo robots.

Before 2020, with world media attention, the sub-challenges will culminate in a race of Flying Donkeys (cargo robots with a maximum take-off weight of 60 kilos) around Mount Kenya in under 24 hours, delivering and collecting 20 kilo payloads along the way. The winner(s) will collect a multi-million dollar prize.

The challenge is sponsored by La Fondation Bundi, a non-profit initiative of the Afrotech project at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss National Centre of Competence for Research in Robotics (NCCR). The Bundi fund will be held in the philanthropic arm of the Lombard-Odier bank in Geneva.

The foundation seeks to pioneer a new transportation system for the world by developing robots with rugged air frames capable of safe and cheap unmanned flight of heavy cargo over long distances. We call these robots flying donkeys.

The first commercial flying donkeys, due in Africa around 2020, will carry 20 kilos of cargo over 50 kilometres in less than one hour along an established network. The foundation is committed to majority African designed and assembled flying donkeys. Our expectation is for tens of thousands of donkeys to be operating globally within a generation.

The foundation has identified technical, legal, logistics and architectural and design challenges. It will award large cash prizes to teams with the best solutions. The foundation will work to ensure flying donkeys are a friendly service, dependably exploiting the space above our heads to create jobs and enable e-commerce.

Photo:  A donkey transports ballot boxes in Afghanistan – Ahmad Masood/Reuters

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