TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Information Systems

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: 425 AN/BYG-1 Submarine Combat Control System (CCS) ACAT III

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 3.5.b.(7) of the solicitation.

OBJECTIVE: Develop an innovative SOA Solution for Multivehicle Control from a Submarine including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV), Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV), and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV)

DESCRIPTION: Under Rapid Technology Transition (RTT) Project TS-00375, Over-The-Horizon (OTH) Target Identification for Submarines, NUWCDIVNPT successfully demonstrated the ability for a submarine to control UAV. However, we should not be only limiting this capability to UAVs. As part of the RTT, the Open UMI Controller that was integrated into AN/BYG1 CCS is a universal controller capable of controlling different types of unmanned vehicles. This SBIR proposes to expand the BYG1/O-UMI CCS control capability by integrating USV, UUV, and UGV into the system. This will provide an overall Service Oriented Architecture solution for the submarine force. .

The Navy needs an open architecture, platform independent, non-proprietary control station software to control unmanned vehicles from submarines. Due to submarine space restrictions, the Navy cannot development multiple control stations and the life cycle management associated with submarines. Current control stations are limited by the architecture, controls only a few unmanned vehicles with proprietary message sets, software, hardware. These control stations are costly to upgrade or expand to control other vehicles and sensors. The Navy is pursuing SOA approach to allow the control of current and future unmanned vehicles and/or sensors. SOA would allow operator tools to be brought easily as services. The control station shall implement STANAG 4586 and Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) Standards.

The biggest benefit of SOA systems is the agility. With the rapid changing of technology with unmanned vehicles the traditional constrained monolithic software solutions provides little flexibility. The loosely-coupled infrastructure, which is SOA offers, that is open to change and can adapt quickly to new unmanned vehicles and sensors that have not even been developed yet. The Navy wants to maximize the reuse control station software in many functional areas such as mission planning and operator tools. The use of SOA and XML schemas for message definition allow for code reuse. The services shall be designed to perform simple, granular functions with limited knowledge of how messages are passed or retrieved will result in more reused code within a larger SOA infrastructure.

PHASE I: Develop a SOA approach and architecture to meet the above requirements for a SOA solution for multivehicle control of unmanned vehicles.

PHASE II: Document and protopye the newly designed SOA control station in a laboratory environment.

PHASE III: Demonstrate a full SOA Control Station using a variety of unmanned vehicles in a shipboard environment.

KEYWORDS: UAS; UAV; Submarine; CCS; CUCS; ISR; USV; UUV; UGV; ISR

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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