The U.S. Army has awarded more than $11 million to 10 small businesses to develop artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions with potential to address ground warfare challenges for the U.S. Soldier.

The awards are in response to three contract opportunities released by the Army Applied Small Business Innovation Research Program for U.S.-based small businesses to propose technology in the areas of electronic warfare, sensors, information systems technology, battlespace environments and human systems.

The Army Applied SBIR Program awarded three small businesses Phase I contracts, through which each company will receive up to $250,000 to focus on the scientific, technical and commercial merit and feasibility of their innovations. The program also awarded seven companies Direct to Phase II contracts of up to $1.7 million each for small businesses ready for prototyping to skip Phase I and start Phase II with Army SBIR funding.

“The U.S. and its allied forces use AI to make decisions faster on the battlefield, providing a tactical advantage over adversaries — but the data to train that artificial intelligence is a critical input,” said Bharat Patel, technology and industry liaison officer with Army PEO Intelligence and Electronic Ware & Sensors and technical point of contact for one of the SBIR topics. “So, being able to augment that training data with synthetic data to train and evaluate models can speed up the development life cycle with significantly less sustained cost.”

Awarded companies are:

• Applied Intuition, Inc. (Sunnyvale, California) for Applied Intuition Spectral Synthetic Sensor Data Generation
• Barron Associates, Inc. (Charlottesville, Virginia) for Fires Optimization through Resilient Decentralized AI/ML
• GreenSight (Boston, Massachusetts) for Super-Human Automated Classification of Scrap (SHARCS)
• Illumination Works, LLC (Beavercreek, Ohio) for AI/ML in Automated Scrap Inspection
• InfoBeyond Technology LLC (Louisville, Kentucky) for MetalScrap: A Multimodal Attention-based Generative Adversarial Network for Automated and Accurate Metallic Scrap Inspection
• Modus Operandi, Inc. (Melbourne, Florida) for SHOT: Scenario-driven Hypotheses for Optimization of Targets
• NEOSKYE INC (Newington, Connecticut) for Datalink-Enabled AI for Fires Optimization
• R-DEX Systems, Inc. (Marietta, Georgia) for Virtual Sensor System (VSS) for Improved Sensor Synthetic Data Generation
• Soar Technology, Inc. (Ann Arbor, Michigan) for DeepSynth
• Vadum (Raleigh, North Carolina) for Technique for Augmentation and Realistic Data Generation to Enhance Model Training

“Falling behind other countries in the AI race could have devastating consequences for our military,” said Dr. Matt Willis, director of Army Prize Competitions and the Army Applied SBIR Program in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. “The Army hopes to leverage small business innovation to develop AI solutions that enable our military to act faster than their adversaries while placing our resources and, most importantly, our Soldiers at lower risk.”

In addition to benefiting the Army, the Army Applied SBIR Program offers a valuable opportunity for small businesses to interact with Soldiers and technical and operational subject-matter experts, who provide insight into technology needs and guide small businesses through the Army research and development ecosystem. Small businesses are teamed up with technical points of contact who serve as a resource for companies as they mature their technologies for insertion into Army programs of record.

“These organizations responded to these state-of-the-art AI/ML topics and conveyed abundant knowledge and experience in the area,” said William Truran, a general engineer with Army PEO Armaments and Ammunition and technical point of contact for one of the SBIR topics. “Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth recently stated that she wishes to ensure the Army becomes more data-centric and can conduct operations in contested environments. The application of this kind of AI/ML technology will lead us in that direction.”

The Army Applied SBIR Program recently announced three new contract opportunities in materials readiness. The pre-release period for the new topics is March 10-24, 2022. During this time, companies can submit questions to the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal and via email. Qualified small businesses can submit proposals beginning March 25 and ending April 26 at noon EDT. Full proposal packages must be submitted through the DSIP Portal. Additional information, including eligibility information and how to apply, can be found on the Army SBIR|STTR website.