SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- Request for Information for Automated Sensor Management and Data Fusion Technology
- Notice Date
- 9/2/2005
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- Contracting Office
- US Army C-E LCMC Acquisition Center - DAAB07, ATTN: AMSEL-AC, Building 1208, Fort Monmouth, NJ 07703-5008
- ZIP Code
- 07703-5008
- Solicitation Number
- W15P7T-05-I2WD-011
- Response Due
- 9/23/2005
- Archive Date
- 11/22/2005
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- The purpose of this announcement is to request white papers for Spiral I of the Sensor Integrated Fusion Technology (SIFT), Army Technology Objective (ATO) Program. Responses to this RFI will be reviewed by the Government and may result in an invita tion to submit proposals against the BAA for a 2QFY06 Spiral I award. Award is not guaranteed and the Government does not intend to pay for information received. The goal of SIFT is to develop technology to improve the utility of sensor system output to human operators. SIFT is a four-year program which will demonstrate enhanced Brigade-level situational awareness by developing a flexible, semi-autonomous, multi-s ensor fusion and sensor management capability aboard an air (or ground) platform. The system will provide the Warfighter with near real-time situational awareness (SA) as well as support rapid target development. Specific program objectives include: (1) enhanced situational awareness, (2) high confidence (human derived & facilitated through cross-cueing) object ID, (3) flexible mission-oriented tailoring, (4) enhanced target prosecution rate, (5) robust extended track and hold capability, (6) reduced op erator workload, and (7) reduced communication bandwidth. The SIFT program is comprised of three Spirals, the first of which is a two year effort to develop, integrate and flight test a closed-loop system to demonstrate incremental progress in achieving the above objectives. During this Spiral the Government pla ns to team with a single industry partner. The Government will provide a general architecture and preliminary ICDs to components which are external to the core fusion processes, such as sensor interface/selection, data-link, Man-Machine Interface, GPS ser vices, data dissemination, sensor-platform integration, and over-arching system control (initialization, tasking and status). The Industry partner will provide a baseline collection of fusion services to fit within this framework. Industry and the Govern ment are intended to work collaboratively to develop a lab-prototype (hosted in the Government SIL) within ten months, a fully functional lab system within 16 months, and an airborne configuration hosted within 19 months. The Government expects an award o f ~$5M for this effort. The Government is requesting information on approaches to the fusion complement (a collection of fusion services) that are realistically achievable within the approximate bounds of the cost and schedule constraints discussed above. Fusion services (within this document) shall refer to any process that enhances the information derived from available data sources; from initial sensor exploitation through dynamic sensor & route planning. For the purposes of this RFI, fusion can occur at the pixel, feature, o bject, or report level. Only those organizations or industry teams (encouraged) capable of providing the full complement of the objective capabilities should respond. The objectives of the fusion complement, not listed in prioritized manner, are as follows: (1) Implement the fusion constructs and services necessary to support near-real-time autonomous wide-area detection and dynamic cross-cueing of high-fidelity narrow field-of-view (NFOV) assets to optimize the coverage, fidelity and accuracy of information available to the analyst. The intent of cueing is generally, but not exclusively, to obtain ID-quality imagery for the analyst. (2) Provide a mission-oriented and mission-tailorable framework such that an operators mission need(s), rather than specific collection tasks, form the basis for SIFT operation. At a minimum the desired Spiral I solution should provide the ability to, in low-density environments: Autonomously Detect (wide-area) and cue (NFOV) on moving vehicular threats; Autonomously Detect (wide-area) and cue (NFOV) on stationary vehicular threats; Engage operator-identified vehicular threats under persistent track for a t least twelve minutes. (3) Fusion Services should accept as inputs Raw data from co-located sensors such as: SIGINT, tactical SAR/GMTI, RF Tags and commercial EO/IR systems; external report-level feeds such as from counter-mortar radars; and IPB/IPE products such as land-cover and elevation data. Raw data refers to complex imagery, video, lines-of-bearing, and unfiltered MTI data streams. (4) Fusion services should be implemented in such a manner that objects most likely to represent threats are prosecuted first to avoid wasting sensor/processing resources on non-threat-like objects. The basis for object prioritization includes, but is not limited to, sensor-derived object-features, object-level classifications and/or context within the battlespace. Threat-like, for Spiral 1, will be defined as a vehicle of various types. (5) Fusion services should provide temporally and spatially correlated and prioritized data products to a GFE database from which products can be disseminated. Products include single and multi INT tracks/reports. (6) Fusion services should generate and optimize collection plans (route and sensor scheduling) and dynamically update them throughout the mission as appropriate. Optimization should consider sensor performance, sensor constraints, fusion performance, env ironmental limitations (shadowing, weather, etc.) and mission objectives. Sensor tasks should be autonomously generated by the fusion services and executed by Government-provided sensor control services. Platform routes should be generated by the fusion services, but approved/executed by the platform operator. (7) All services and constructs are desired to be sufficiently flexible and scalable to accommodate new missions, new target sets, new sensors/modes (of the same general types indicated above) and alternative fusion services. All services must be well def ined and self-contained. (8) To increase modularity, portability, ease of evaluation and ease of integration throughout the evolution of this program, all inter-service (e.g. SIFT fusion services) communications should use middleware such as CORBA, JXTA or RMI, and a GFE database backbone for storage of all major inter-service data products such as fused/un-fused reports and tracks. Linux is the preferred operating environment. The collection of fusion services should be host-able on a compute platform containing no more than ten CPUs. It is preferred that Fusion services be compute-platform independent. Responses to this RFI should be no more than 25 single sided pages of size 10 or 12 font. The responses should describe the approach within the service-oriented architectural and programmatic constraints and objectives outlined above. Responses are to be received by 10:00 EST, 23 SEP 2005. All information must be in writing or via e-mail. You may forward responses to US Army, RDECOM, CERDEC, I2WD, Bldg. 600, Fort Monmouth, NJ, 07703, ATTN: AMSRD-CER-IW-BA (Mr. Fedorow) or the followin g e-mail address: Vincent.Fedorow@us.army.mil. Acknowledgement of receipt will be issued. If you choose to submit proprietary information, mark it accordingly. Classified information will be accepted by mail only, but please mark it accordingly and send it via proper channels. Classified information can be sent to US Army, RDECOM, CERDEC, I2WD, Bldg. 600, Fort Monmouth, NJ, 07703, ATTN: Security Office. The inner wrapping shall be addressed to: ATTN: AMSRD-CER-IW-BA (Mr. Fedorow). Questions regarding this information request are encouraged and can be directed to Mr. Fedorow VIA EMAIL ONLY.
- Place of Performance
- Address: US Army RDECOM CERDEC, I2W Directorate ATTN: AMSRD-CER-IW-BA, Building 600 Fort Monmouth NJ
- Zip Code: 07703-5000
- Country: US
- Zip Code: 07703-5000
- Record
- SN00886107-W 20050904/050902212311 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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