SOLICITATION NOTICE
A -- Autonomous Persistent Tactical Surveillance - Full Announcement
- Notice Date
- 5/27/2011
- Notice Type
- Presolicitation
- NAICS
- 541712
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research, ONR, CODE ONR-02, 875 North Randolph St., Suite 1425, Arlington, Virginia, 22203-1995
- ZIP Code
- 22203-1995
- Solicitation Number
- ONRBAA11-023
- Archive Date
- 9/27/2011
- Point of Contact
- Rebecca Foster, Phone: 703-696-2972, Vera M. Carroll, Phone: 703-696-2610
- E-Mail Address
-
REBECCA.D.FOSTER@NAVY.MIL, vera.carroll@navy.mil
(REBECCA.D.FOSTER@NAVY.MIL, vera.carroll@navy.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- ONRBAA11-023 Full Announcement posted 27 MAY 2011. The Office of Naval Research is interested in receiving white papers and full proposals for both Applied Research and Advanced Technology Development that will forge major advancements towards a user oriented "World View" with varying degrees of fidelity for situational awareness and understanding for both Tactical and Strategic views. To achieve this vision, Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) products need to be synchronized with Command and Control (C2) for seamless mission prosecution. The program goals are to: 1) provide timely unified information support to the agile tactical user, and 2) develop autonomous mission focused sensing systems. United States (US) Forces are being placed in environments where they are required to function with increased autonomy. The need is stronger than ever to be able to autonomously maintain persistent surveillance of activities and entities over a region of interest on a continuing (24 hrs / 7 days a week) basis, as well as automated tasking of these assets upon mission priority (e.g., Troops in Contact (TIC) versus Nation Building activities). In order to achieve this, an underlying context for real-time adaptive surveillance in support of tactical mission objectives is essential. The use of open architectures and compliance with industry standards is important for facilitating system integration and efficient sharing of information in an enterprise. US Forces currently request and are allocated ISR assets during the mission planning process (e.g., Rapid Response Planning Process (R2P2)). However, quite often the low density of ISR assets necessitates the sharing of assets between units. This is especially true in the distributed environment related to Counter Insurgency (COIN) Marines operate in today. This means operations proceed without certainty that there will be sufficient ISR coverage. Operational staffs (especially Battalion level and below) are forced to work with limited situational awareness while providing support to units in the field (e.g., convoys, mobile and foot mobile patrols). This limits the overall ability of the unit to provide Command and Control (C2) because of the limited situational awareness. Automated mission focused autonomy for unmanned vehicles (UxVs) and subsequent real-time tasking of these assets by units in the field does not exist, but is necessary to reduce the manning required to operate sensors and make sensor placement decisions that can provide our Forces needed coverage. Furthermore, the enormous volume of data produced by ISR assets necessitates the automation of data processing for transport (e.g., data compression, data orchestration for mediation) and to assist the warfighter in the conversion of the data into automation (e.g., searching high value target databases with information from image recognition algorithms run over the ISR feeds, algorithms that support data fusion across warfighting functions). Changing relevance of rural/urban data means that the data provided must have space-time and geo-cultural context to provide essential information to mobile users. Commanders need an Information Technology (IT) architecture that supports information sharing to efficiently utilize all resources across their domains including platforms, personnel, sensors, and networks to prosecute multiple missions. Current capability limitations include the following: • Ability to organize knowledge at both the tactical and strategic levels by unified information ontologies or data mappings. • Ability to assess large quantities of imagery and full motion video information and determine potential threat activities using algorithms that work with limited IT assets (i.e., storage and processing). • Ability to express the information needs of tactical missions and provide users relevant information through the enterprise. • Ability to project the value of information versus location given mission plans and area events over time. • Ability to align tactical and strategic analysis capabilities and sensor resources to current and future information requirements. The BAA seeks to develop an ability to measure the value of information across an area as a function of time given knowledge of current and future missions and to measure the amount of known relevant information spatially organized as a function of time. In addition to the limitations described above, a number of shortfalls exist which are to be addressed in this BAA. These shortfalls are briefly described below. Mission Planning and Direction The planning and direction of tactical and theater sensors are conducted within stovepipes. These stovepipes contain little tactical mission awareness. Manpower intensive sensor control limits the scope of sensor support. There is a lack of sharing knowledge of unfolding events across mission threads. Data Processing and Exploitation Analysis is manpower constrained on partial data sets. The Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace (IPB) is a slow, manual, and inaccessible to the enterprise process. There is a lack of timely exploitation of useful theater and national sensor data. There are gaps in alerting Forces to danger. Mobile Sensing and Production Tactical users do not fully benefit from enterprise knowledge or effectively feedback observations to the operational view. There is a lack of mobile tools for field users to gather information. There is a lack of means for reporting soft biometric data on at-risk individuals or groups engaged in suspicious activity. Dissemination and Utilization Many sensors fail to deliver relevant information to users outside their stovepipes. The enterprise lacks flexibility to morph dynamically with changing tactical mission requirements. Wide area sensors support is available at command levels but is needed at unit level to counter irregular actors. Sensor data overwhelms the distribution, analysis, storage, and assimilation capabilities. The three (3) Thrust Areas are described in further detail in the following sections. Thrust Area 1 - Mobile Autonomous ISR to C2 Synchronization The objective of this thrust is to extend the current baseline of the MAGTF C2 Software Architecture and its implementation (i.e., Tactical Service Oriented Architecture (TSOA)) to establish the necessary standards and patterns as well as provide a reference implementation for ISR and C2 that allows sensor and data analysis nodes to anticipate the information needs of the tactical warfighter. The approach should use open standards where possible (with reason provided why open standards did not suffice) as well as comply with Modular Open System Architecture (MOSA) principles and functions as diagramed below. A key challenge is the delivery of relevant information to mobile users (foot mobile and vehicle borne). This could be addressed through a cloudlet computing or other computing paradigm. The architecture should enable generation of simultaneous situational awareness for both the Marine Squad (foot mobile or vehicular borne on land or at sea) as well as their command and control agency (e.g., Combat Operations Center, Company Level Operations Center) with relevant data and alerts of potential danger. Thrust Area 2 - Autonomous Information-Based Surveillance Control The objective of this thrust area is to develop an autonomous sensing system that utilizes coverage history, data and context from available sources, along with, mission plan and routes to provide persistent surveillance over a large region of interest, typically 40 nmi by 40 nmi with multiple UxVs. This tactical information is to be provided from a group of UxVs operating in an autonomous mode. Thrust Area 3 - Contextual Enterprise Information The objective of this thrust area is to develop and exploit enterprise tools to: i.) Assess coverage of tactical sensors to identify gaps in coverage, ii.) Recognize contextual information needed to support tactical activities, and iii.) Satisfy the need for additional coverage or context, where feasible, through access to naval or other Service or Agency assets or archived information sources. Proposals should specify thrust area addressed, either Thrust Area 1, Thrust Area 2, or Thrust Area 3. A well written proposal will describe the technologies that will be developed. Rationale should be provided as to why the approach chosen offers promise to the warfighter. These can be focused to any particular level of command. Within the proposal, clearly state who the potential users will be that would benefit from this capability. To ensure that technology developments are compatible with DoD and information technology standards, proposals should also identify the format standards, protocol standards, display standards, etc. that will be used.
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