Objective

This topic seeks to develop autonomous drone swarm capability for watercraft operated in a riverine environment. The fielding of autonomous powered floating bridges will enable the Army to conduct unpredictable dispersed river crossings, increase crew survivability by removing the man from the craft, and reduce logistics footprint over the Improved Ribbon Bridge in use today by combining both payload capacity and powertrain into a single craft. The development of an autonomy package for multiple dispersed floating bays to interact separately and jointly is the key technology to bring this capability to the 2040 battlespace.

Description

Current Gap crossing solutions do not meet the Army’s requirements for the Future Operational Environment of 2040 and beyond. Future Gap Crossing technology must consider near peer adversarial capabilities and support sustainment operations in a lethal contested logistics environment when the enemy can attack targets at virtually any depth within the battlespace.

Autonomous powered floating bridges increase mission effectiveness and survivability by enabling unpredictable nonlinear river crossing, remove the Combat Engineers from the breach bridging mission, and reducing the logistics footprint by combining together into a single platform what currently take two today. To achieve these benefits, a number of developments must be made.

Core to the success of this effort is the development of an autonomy capability that will allow for the operation of multiple dispersed floating bays in near vicinity to each other while operating independently or when combined together in a single larger rafting platform.

Within this effort, the Contractor will need to select or mature sensor technology that can handle any marine environment, to include obstacle laden rivers or waters heavily occluded by salt or dirt particles.

Tied in with the sensing, the selected contractor will need to develop control and communication logic to keep numerous unmanned robotic rafting bays, all in the general vicinity of each other, from colliding with terrain obstacles (man-made or natural) and each other in potentially turbulent waters.

The bays must also be able to find and orient with each other to permit the connecting of multiple bays (the actual physical connection is out of scope here) for increased buoyancy and follow on river rafting transport of various weight military vehicle payloads. The effort will culminate in a demonstration of the capability on surrogate platforms of the contractor’s choosing to demonstrate the above in a relevant marine environment.

Phase I

This topic is only accepting Phase I proposals for a cost up to $250,000 for a 6-month period of performance.

Phase I milestones include a feasibility study report that identifies the communication, spatial awareness and guidance sensors and plans for how the bays will leverage the onboard sensors to execute the objective. The study also needs to include a discussion on the proposed architecture and its integration with other DoD systems, and how the proposed solution would be tested and validated when installed on a surrogate platform.

Phase II

Phase II milestones encompass development of architecture, methodology and code required to accomplish the goals while being able to operate securely (cyber) and in a potential GPS denied environment, sourcing or development of appropriate sensor and logic with breadboard testing, identification of a DoD compliant controller when not fully autonomous, Modeling & Simulation (M&S) products to support hardware selection; outfitting surrogates with selected hardware; a Developmental Test Plan; testing conducted in relevant conditions; Test Reports, and prototype deliverables, including software.

Phase III

• Infrastructure Inspection: Efficiently examine and assess the condition of critical structures like bridges and pipelines for maintenance and safety.
• Uncrewed vehicle swarming for last-mile delivery: Efficiently deliver supplies.
• Underwater Exploration: Used for underwater exploration and research, where multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) can work together to map the ocean floor, study marine life, and monitor underwater ecosystems.
• Agricultural Monitoring: Observe and manage agricultural activities, enhanced by swarm technology.
• Space Exploration: Collaborative robotic swarm technology to enhance mission efficiency and data collection.

Submission Information

For more information, and to submit your full proposal package, visit the DSIP Portal.

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