Objective

Operating, maneuvering, engaging, defending, and commanding the Combat Vehicles on the modern battlefield requires a significant level of crew communication, systems management, and situational awareness.

As a result, it imperative to reduce the cognitive burden on vehicle crews and enable rapid decision-making, especially during combat. To support this, the US Army is seeking innovative solutions that will enable autonomous maneuvers in response to crew commands issued with natural language.

Description

Army combat vehicles will conduct operations in an increasingly complex battlefield presenting the crew with significant challenges in terms of cognitive load and operational efficiency, particularly in tactical situations where rapid decision-making is critical.

To address this, the US Army seeks the development of a robust solution capable of conducting autonomous maneuvers in response to natural language commands.

As vehicle crews are required to manage multiple tasks simultaneously—such as navigating complex environments, assessing real-time intelligence from multiple sensors and data feeds, engaging targets, and communicating with friendly forces—the cognitive burden can overwhelm any vehicle crew.

 In combat, the crew must be able to make rapid, life-saving decisions while also executing vehicle maneuvers with precision. This is especially true in situations where the environment is dynamic, and the mission parameters can change rapidly.

The goal of this SBIR topic is to develop a prototype solution that allows a combat vehicle to perform basic autonomous maneuvers in response to commands issued in natural language.

These commands-to-autonomous maneuver may include, but are not limited to, movement to known or unknown waypoints, tactical repositioning (e.g., fire-and-displace or “shoot-and-scoot”), turret commands (e.g., traverse, elevate, slew-to-cue), and coordination with other vehicles during multi-vehicle operations.

Specifically, the prototype solution should address the following key areas:

• Autonomous Movement to Waypoints: The system must be able to navigate to both pre-defined and dynamically specified locations on the battlefield with minimal crew input. This will allow the crew to focus on target engagement or coordination with friendly forces while the vehicle maneuvers autonomously.
• Tactical Repositioning: The system must support tactical maneuvers such as fire-and-displace (shoot-and-scoot), where the vehicle automatically retreats to a safe position after engaging a target.
• Turret Commands: The system must enable basic turret movements such as traverse, elevate, and slew-to-cue.
• Multi-Vehicle Coordination: The system must enable the vehicle to operate in coordination with other units, maintaining formation and movement techniques (e.g., traveling overwatch, bounding overwatch).
• Natural Language Command Integration: The system must be capable of being utilized with natural language, enabling the crew to issue natural language, voice-based commands. The system should interpret commands such as “move 300 meters east” or “retreat to rally point” and translate them into actionable, autonomous maneuvers.
• Reliable Autonomous Navigation: The system must be capable of enabling reliable autonomous waypoint navigation in complex off-road terrain at speeds of up to 20 mph. The system must be able to perceive and interpret data from all onboard sensors, compute, and software to accurately identify and navigate around complex off-road obstacles such as rocks, vegetation, and ditches. It must also include autonomous route planning and execution capabilities, conducting this navigation without human intervention or tele-operation.

Phase I

This topic is accepting Direct to Phase II proposals for a cost up to $2,000,000 for an 18-month period of performance.

Proposers interested in submitting a DP2 proposal must provide documentation to substantiate that the scientific and technical merit and feasibility equivalent to a Phase I project has been met. Documentation can include data, reports, specific measurements, success criteria of a prototype, etc.

Phase II

Individual technologies from autonomous maneuver and natural language processing already perform at a TRL 6 independently.  However, integration of these two technologies is likely at TRL 3.  It is expected to be low risk for integration of these two independent technologies to achieve a TRL 5 by the end of Phase II.

Phase III

• Automotive: Car speech recognition technology will continue to get better and proliferate.​
• Smart Systems (IoT): From manufacturing to smart homes, interconnected, AI-enabled systems that recognize speech will improve efficiency.
• Healthcare: Helpful from rudimentary dictation to analyzing tests and imaging​.
• HR: Voice searches for HR policy, customer service, IT issues and more​.
• Autonomous operation of farming and heavy construction equipment.
• Autonomous mining operations in remote or hazardous areas.
• Supporting public safety use cases such as search and rescue, wildland firefighting, and border security.

Submission Information

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

SBIR|STTR Help Desk: usarmy.sbirsttr@army.mil