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Tactical Behaviors for Autonomous Maneuver

Dept of the Army -- Materiel Command · Opportunity W911NF-22-S-0011

Who can apply

• Others

It is our goal for the program to include a diverse group of Applicants with varied long-term interests.Applicants may be institutions of higher education, for-profit, or non-profit organizations. FederallyFunded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) may propose as well, with effort as allowed bytheir sponsoring agency and in accordance with their sponsoring agency policy. Proposals may consistof teams from any combination of organizations (e.g., prime and subawardees), but this is not arequirement for award and award will only be made to a single entity.

About this opportunity

**UPDATE 5 APRIL 2024: The proposal submission date has been updated to 24 April 2024. The FOA has been amended to reflect this submission date and include a Question and Answer document based on questions received from interested applicants. Other than the updated proposal submission date in the FOA, the actual FOA Amendment has not been changed. However, the answers provided in the Q&A document are considered part of the FOA Amendment.** **CYCLE 2 UPDATE 20 MARCH 2024 - THE OPPORTUNITY WEBINAR FOR CYCLE 2 WILL BE HELD ONLINE VIA MS TEAMS AT 1500 EDT ON 22 MARCH 2024 AT THE FOLLOWING LINK: https://dod.teams.microsoft.us/l/meetup-join/19%3adod%3ameeting_5fa41fe6fa874484b473d8a6ba7921c6%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22fae6d70f-954b-4811-92b6-0530d6f84c43%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22e9f6fc39-8f22-44e5-8bd0-64f0cde32305%22%2c%22IsBroadcastMeeting%22%3atrue%7d **UPDATE 14 MARCH 2024 - CYCLE 2 HAS BEEN POSTED TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT. PLEASE REVIEW THE UPDATED ANNOUNCEMENT IN FULL FOR SUBMISSION TIME, UPDATED TOPIC, AND FUNDING AMOUNT AND SCHEDULE CHANGES FROM CYCLE 1** TACTICAL BEHAVIORS FOR AUTONOMOUS MANEUVER COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM (TBAM-CRP) Future Army forces will be called upon to operate and maneuver in multi-domain operations (MDO), against a modern and capable peer adversary. The battlefield of the future may impose additional constraints on maneuver forces such as disruption in communication as well as positioning services. To field a highly capable fighting force in this future battlefield, novel tactics and doctrines leveraging nascent technologies in robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) will need to be developed. Teams of RAS will serve an increasingly critical role in the future force to deliver situational awareness, defend key locations or positions, or take point in dynamic and hazardous situations. Resilience to disruptions, failures, or unexpected scenarios, is a key quality for teams of RAS to operate alongside other future Army forces. The US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is focused on developing fundamental understanding and informing the art-of-the-possible for warfighter concepts through research to greatly improve the scope of mission capabilities of teams of RAS, develop robust and resilient approaches to plan under extreme conditions of uncertainty, to learn coordinated strategies for groups of agents to achieve a common objective, all within a complex maneuver environment including adversaries. The Tactical Behaviors for Autonomous Maneuver Collaborative Research Program (TBAM-CRP) is focused on developing and experimentally evaluating coordinated and individual behaviors for small groups of autonomous agents to learn doctrinal as well as novel tactics for maneuvering in military relevant environments. The TBAM-CRP will leverage developments in other internal and extramural programs as well as identify new research directions to find novel solutions to these maneuver problems in analogical simulations representing complex realistic terrain. The Tactical Behaviors for Autonomous Maneuver Collaborative Research Program (TBAM-CRP) will consist of a series of sprint efforts executed with annual program reviews. Each topic will be focused on addressing a different set of scientific areas which will support the research aims of an associated ARL researcher from a related internal essential research program (ERP) or mission-funded program. The TBAM-CRP has been developed in coordination with other related ARL-funded collaborative efforts (see descriptions of ARL collaborative alliances at https://www.arl.army.mil/business/collaborativealliances/) and shares a common vision of highly collaborative academia-industry-government partnerships; however, it will be executed with a program model adapted from the Scalable, Adaptive, and Resilient Autonomy (SARA), which established a new paradigm for collaborative research. Some key properties of this new approach are described below: • TBAM-CRP sprint topics will be offered on a two-year cycle. Proposals will be solicited for a possible two-year period structured as a first-year pilot followed by a second-year option where the option may be awarded based upon progress assessed at an annual review. The FOA will be amended annually to identify a specific problem statement and scope for that specific cycle. The topics for each cycle will be chosen to address the long-term program goal. • Five new topics (Cycles 1-5) are expected in FY22, 24, 26, 28, 30. Each topic will be carefully chosen based on the previous accomplishments in the prior cycle(s), the development of new technologies and capabilities in the broader research and development communities, and the Army’s evolving needs for future capabilities. • For each topic, funding will be provided to those Recipients selected under a cooperative agreement (CA). • Enhanced Research Program funding from ARL or Other Government Agencies (OGAs) may become available during a cycle which provides a mechanism for growth and enhancement within the TBAM-CRP. A proposal should not include any discussion of the Enhanced Research Program. Recipients receiving a CA will be notified and provided details if the opportunity for Enhanced Research Program funding becomes available during their award period of performance. • There is no limitation on the place of performance, although on-site collaboration at ARL facilities and with ARL researchers as well as with other Recipients are encouraged. Research outcomes in this program must, at the very least, be demonstrated in sophisticated simulations of relevant environments. Together with ARL collaborators, these results may be adapted for higher TRL experimentation on surrogate platforms at ARL test facilities such as the Robotics Research Collaboration Campus (R2C2) at Graces Quarters, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. • Recipients will be furnished with access to the ARL Autonomy Stack soft

Portfolio context — this listing covers more than this opportunity

This opportunity is funded under Assistance Listing 12.630 (“Basic, Applied, and Advanced Research in Science and Engineering”), a broad federal program that made about 174 new awards per year over the last five fiscal years (median award $490k). Those figures describe that whole portfolio — not this specific solicitation, so we don't show them as if they were this opportunity's track record.

Applicant counts per solicitation are not published by any federal agency — no one can honestly sell you that number.

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