TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Information Systems, Ground/Sea Vehicles, Sensors

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMS-420

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 and demonstrate a decentralized, autonomous system that fuses the data from heterogeneous, geographically dispersed sensors deployed on unmanned vehicles into a common operational picture.

DESCRIPTION: Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), as well as unmanned vehicles of other types, are being considered by the U.S. Navy for various missions. The following capabilities are critical to the utility of unmanned vehicles:
� Automated fusion of data from heterogeneous sensors located on various geographically dispersed unmanned platforms into meaningful information. This information will be provided to the unmanned vehicles as well as the system operator
� Sensor data should be processed within the group of unmanned vehicles; it should not have to be transmitted to the operator control station for processing
� Constraints such as limited communications bandwidth and intermittency of communications should be factored into the system design. For example, the system should not rely on transmitting large amounts of data between the unmanned vehicles
� Automated prioritization of contacts based on commander�s intent
� Distilling data for humans, providing alerts and requests for assistance, etc., via limited bandwidth communication links

PHASE I: Demonstrate feasibility and develop a design concept for an automated data fusion system that provides the above-described capabilities and that can operate on a group of USVs, or unmanned vehicles of other types. The focus should be on an approach for fusing data from heterogeneous sensors and processing the data to provide prioritization of contacts, alerts for human operators, and requests to the human operator. This system should process data from radar, EOIR and underwater acoustic sensors that are employed on unmanned vehicles. Sensor development is not within the scope of this topic. Automated tasking of sensors and unmanned vehicles is not within the scope of this topic. It is expected that the Offeror will choose readily available COTS sensors for this work.

PHASE II: Fabricate a prototype of the system designed in Phase I and perform a land-based/pierside demonstration. Provide detailed drawings and specifications.

PHASE III: At-sea demonstration of system aboard manned/unmanned platforms.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS:
The technology proposed in this Topic has relevance to the commercial maritime exploration, survey, surveillance and security system industries.

REFERENCES:

1. D. Scheidt et al., "Cooperating Unmanned Vehicles", IEEE, July 2005 (provides an example of a group of USVs that might employ the data fusion developed in this Topic).
2. T. Huntsberger, et al, "Autonomy for Unmanned Sea Surface and Undersea vehicles", AUVSI, July 2008 (provides an example of a world view of fused EOIR and radar onboard a single USV).

KEYWORDS: data fusion; autonomous vehicles; common operational picture; distributed system; USV

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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