A -- PERCEPTOR PROGRAM

Notice Date

November 20, 2000

Contracting Office

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contract Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714

ZIP Code

22203-1714

Solicitation Number

PS01-02

Response Due

January 24, 2001

Point of Contact

Technical POC: Dr. Scott Fish, DARPA/TTO, FAX: (703) 696-2302; Contracts POC: Robin M. Swatloski, DARPA/CMO, Email: rswatloski@darpa.mil

Description

DARPA will host an Industry Day on the PerceptOR Program on Monday, December 04, 2000 near the DARPA building in Arlington Virginia from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. The exact location will be provided to registered organizations on November 29 when an attendee count is made. The purpose of this Industry Day is to familiarize industry and academia with the PerceptOR program and its acquisition strategy. All interested members of industry, academia, private and government agencies are invited to attend. Each organization is asked to limit attendees to two (2). There are no clearance requirements for this meeting. Pre-registration is required to attend. To register, provide the following information by November 28: Name, Company/Organization, Telephone number and email address to Ellen Long at elong@mapcorp.com or Fax to 703-248-0411. Perception for Off Road Robots: (PerceptOR). The DARPA Tactical Technology Office (TTO), in collaboration with the ARMY, has issued a draft solicitation for the PerceptOR Program. The purpose of this "Draft" version is to stimulate questions and/or comments which could be used to improve a "Final" version to be released soon. An Industry Day is being planned for November 29 as described near the end of this announcement. The solicitation is available in electronic form only, and is posted on the DARPA/TTO web page (http://www.darpa.mil/tto/solicitations.html). The DARPA/ARMY PerceptOR program is one of several technologies supporting the DARPA/ARMY Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. This program will focus on the understanding of perception needs for off-road mobility in robots and development of new techniques and algorithms to enable robots to operate with high levels of autonomy in environments associated with FCS combat operations. The program is based on gaining strong experimental evidence of robotic capability to operate with minimal human intervention when navigating in a variety of off-road terrains and weather conditions. This capability is considered fundamental to FCS operational concepts, which leverage minimal troop counts and maximum tactical flexibility. It is understood that over the time frame of this program (36 months) the community will not be likely to achieve fully autonomous movement over long distances in complex and somewhat unknown terrain without human intervention. DARPA does however, expect that human controllers will be able to command and periodically monitor multiples of robots being tasked with rather complex missions. In these cases, partial autonomy, where a human controller may occasionally remotely assist the robots to resolve perception ambiguity, should provide real utility to FCS forces. Although there are a plethora of behaviors robots may be required to execute as part of their missions, it is hypothesized that movement from point "A" to point "B" in complex battle environments will be a major enabler for FCS. Accordingly, this program will address advanced perception systems for off-road mobility of robots. The perception system is defined here as being the sensors, their mounting geometry and stabilization, and the algorithms needed to obtain critical ground navigation obstacle characteristics and direct responses in the robots to avoid them. Note that the needed level of identification and classification of obstacles will be governed only by the level needed for action to be taken by the mobility system. It should be clear that targeting level information is not necessarily required for mobility. The Draft Solicitation describes the program plan and evaluation criteria for a three phase approach to experimentally demonstrating significant advances in off-road robotic navigation. The first phase involves innovative experimentation to quantify the preliminary performance of critical perception components. Performers will also prepare in Phase I, surrogate unmanned vehicles with their perception prototype hardware and software for testing in Phase II. This second phase will involve both developmental experiments as planned by the performing teams, and four evaluation experiments hosted by the Government. Each of the evaluation experiments will be held at a different site to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each prototype under varying terrain and environmental conditions. The final phase of the program will involve prototype updates and testing of their performance in degraded conditions. This will allow the Army to understand the level of utility for use in conditions more closely associated with combat (limited communications and attrition). Experimental data and methodology from this program will be provided to the government with full unlimited rights. A formal information transfer will be required of PerceptOR prototype performance, sensor type, and mounting approaches to the FCS Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle (UGCV) and FCS Concept Development Teams. This data will be used to allow UGCV candidates to be played in larger systems contexts to highlight their potential in FCS applications. Proprietary information and equipment must be highlighted in the proposals. In order to broaden the technology and industrial base available for meeting Department of Defense needs, new conditions have been put forth on the use of Section 845 Other Transaction for Prototype authority by the recent enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2001. Section 803 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2001 (Public Law 106-398) became law on 30 October 2000. Section 803 modifies our authority to use the Other Transactions for Prototypes. In summary, for proposals submitted under this solicitation there must be either at least one nontraditional defense contractor participating to a significant extent in the prototype project; or, if there is no nontraditional defense contractor participating to a significant extent, at least one of the following circumstances exists; at least one third of the total cost of the prototype project is to be paid with funds provided by parties to the transaction other than the Federal Government; or, the senior procurement executive determines that exceptional circumstances justify the use of a transaction that provides for innovative business arrangements or structures that would not be feasible or appropriate under a contract. The formation to multi-disciplinary teams consisting of industry, academia, and/or national laboratories with complementary areas of expertise is strongly encouraged. To this end, DARPA invites all interested nontraditional defense contractors to provide capability statements to assist with teaming arrangements. Capability statements limited to one page will be posted on the web with the solicitation. Specific information content, communications, networking, and team formation are the sole responsibilities of the participants. DARPA does not endorse the information and organizations posted. Interested parties are encouraged to read the Evaluation Criteria for Proposals section of the Solicitation. For details on proposal submission requirements and deadline see the solicitation at the website specified below. The final solicitation is expected to be posted in early December. No additional notice will be published for the final solicitation. Questions and comments concerning the draft solicitation can be directed to the DARPA Agreements Officer, Robin Swatloski via email at rswatloski@darpa.mil or (703) 696-0081. WEB: Click here for a copy of the draft solicitation, http://www.darpa.mil/tto/solicitations.html. E-MAIL: Click here to send via email questions regarding this PS01-02 @darpa.mil .

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20001122/ASOL005.HTM (W-325 SN5070T5)