HR001117S0011-Amendment-03.pdf

BAA# HR001117S0011-3 OFFENSIVE SWARM-ENABLED TACTICS (OFFSET)

Broad Agency Announcement OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) Amendment 3 – Swarm Sprint 3

Tactical Technology Office (TTO)

HR001117S0011

October 11, 2018

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Tactical Technology Office 675 North Randolph Street Arlington, VA 22203-2114

BAA# HR001117S0011-3 OFFENSIVE SWARM-ENABLED TACTICS (OFFSET) i

PART I: OVERVIEW INFORMATION

PART II: FULL TEXT OF ANNOUNCEMENT

I. Funding Opportunity Description

A. Program Vision B. Program Description C. OFFSET Swarm Sprints Structure D. Swarm Sprint Description

II. Award Information A. General Award Information B. Fundamental Research

III. Eligibility Information A. Eligible Applicants B. Organizational Conflicts of Interest C. Cost Sharing/Matching

IV. Application and Submission Information A. Address to Request Application Package B. Content and Form of Application Submission C. Funding Restrictions D. Other Submission Requirements

V. Application Review Information A. Evaluation Criteria B. Review of Proposals

VI. Award Administration Information A. Selection Notices and Notifications B. Administrative and National Policy Requirements C. Reporting D. Electronic Systems

VII. Agency Contacts VIII. Other Information

A. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) B. Associate Contractor Agreement (ACA) Clause C. List of Attachments

BAA# HR001117S0011-3 OFFENSIVE SWARM-ENABLED TACTICS (OFFSET) 1

PART I: OVERVIEW INFORMATION

Federal Agency Name – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tactical Technology Office (TTO)

Funding Opportunity Title – OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET)

Announcement Type – Amendment

Funding Opportunity Number – HR001117S0011

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Numbers (CFDA) – 12.910 Research and Technology Development

Dates o Proposers Day: Virtual, posted on FBO o Posting Date: October 11 2018 o Proposal Due: November 13 2018, 1300 (Eastern)

**Calls for Swarm Sprinter proposals will be issued periodically (6-month intervals are anticipated) as amendments to this BAA at future dates yet to be determined.

These calls may be issued at any time up to one year from the posting date.

Concise description of the funding opportunity – The goal of OFFSET Swarm Sprints is to create focused breakthroughs in swarm technologies to be integrated into the OFFSET Swarm Systems Architecture. The specific topics of interest for this amendment are (1) the design, development, and demonstration of new approaches for human-swarm interactions and/or new human-swarm interface technologies; and

(2) the innovation and integration of novel swarm tactics relevant to OFFSET Vignette 2.

Anticipated individual awards – DARPA intends to award up to fifteen Swarm Sprinter awards in this Swarm Sprint call. No individual award is anticipated to be above $450K (including all options proposed).

Types of instruments that may be awarded – Procurement contract, cooperative agreement, or Other Transaction.

Agency contact o Points of Contact

The BAA Coordinator for this effort can be reached at:

OFFSET@darpa.mil mailto:OFFSET@darpa.mil

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PART II: FULL TEXT OF ANNOUNCEMENT

I. Funding Opportunity Description

This publication constitutes a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) as contemplated in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.102(d)(2) and 35.016 and 2 CFR § 200.203. Any resultant award negotiations will follow all pertinent law and regulation, and any negotiations and/or awards for procurement contracts will use procedures under FAR 15.4, Contract Pricing, as specified in the

BAA.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative proposals to expand the operational effectiveness of combat forces utilizing unmanned swarm systems.

Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.

The following information is for those wishing to respond to this BAA.

A. Program Vision

This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

B. Program Description This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

B.1. Core Elements of the OFFSET Swarm System This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

B.2. Defining the Swarm Systems Architecture This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

B.3. OFFSET Swarm Ecosystem This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

B.3.a. Swarm Systems Integrators The initial release of this BAA sought well-balanced and expert teams, referred to as Swarm Systems Integrators (SSIs), capable of holistically designing, developing, and deploying the envisioned OFFSET swarm system architecture, as detailed above, to include:

an extensible game-based architecture to enable design and integration of swarm tactics, a community-fostering forum (e.g., swarm tactics exchange) for curation of swarm tactics and an automated workflow for their assessment, BAA# HR001117S0011-3 OFFENSIVE SWARM-ENABLED TACTICS (OFFSET) 3 immersive interactive modalities for intuitive and robust teams of humans and swarm systems, aggressive experimentation and systems integration efforts for realizing swarm capabilities.

B.3.b. Swarm Sprinters

This BAA amendment seeks proposals for OFFSET Swarm Sprinters. Swarm Sprinters may comprise third-party developers and/or users. These Swarm Sprinters must be able to design swarm tactics and/or requisite supporting elements as well as develop and integrate them according to the specifications set forth by the architectures (as developed by the Swarm Systems Integrators).

The Government would like to engage with a wider developer and user audience for this capability;

therefore, OFFSET anticipates soliciting proposals for Swarm Sprinters over multiple intervals to conduct “sprints” or rapid technology development efforts to generate novel swarm tactics and to accelerate additional enabling technologies while ensuring operational relevance of the capability-based experiments.

Candidate sprint topics may include more narrowly defined thrusts (such as, for example, the design of swarm tactics relevant to searching a building for hidden caches) or broad emphasis areas (such as integration of novel maneuver specifications for heterogeneous swarm systems). Possible sprints may also emphasize desired improvements to the overall architecture, including enabling toolkits and/or interface enhancements; payload development studies; swarm deployment technologies; and/or other focused investigations based on continued monitoring of advancing technologies relevant to the OFFSET program interests.

Proposals for Swarm Sprinters are expected to be solicited through multiple BAA amendments at periodic (approximately six-month) intervals. The development sprints comprise focused short-term efforts, with key objectives to deliver frequent product increments and integrate them with the open-source architectures provided by the Swarm Systems Integrators. Upon award, Swarm Sprinters are expected to work with the Swarm Systems Integrator(s) to further enhance the swarm systems architecture and its demonstrable capabilities. The Swarm Systems Integrator(s) are also expected to work collaboratively and openly with the Swarm Sprinters to enable smooth integration and encourage user feedback. To promote this open and transparent teamwork OFFSET will use Associate Contractor Agreements (see Section VIII.B). In addition, Swarm Systems Integrator(s), their subcontractor, and any subsidiaries are prohibited from proposing to or being awarded as a Swarm Sprinter.

B.3.c. OFFSET Government Team This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

B.4. OFFSET Metrics This section is unchanged by this amendment; please refer to initial posting of BAA#

HR001117S0011.

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C. OFFSET Swarm Sprints Structure

The overall OFFSET program is structured as a 42-month effort. The first phase extends for 18 months, with the subsequent two phases conducted over 12 months each. The program’s agile development cycle is embodied in a Swarm Systems Integrator-Sprinter ecosystem that focuses development and integration efforts toward six biannual capability-based experiments. Regular field exercises provide opportunities to test and evaluate integration of technologies and provide more direct engagement between warfighters and technologists.

The OFFSET Swarm Sprints are intended to provide technology injects and enhancements to the swarm systems architectures and their demonstrable capabilities. Such injects provide means to:

respond to the evolving needs of the program, leverage emerging technologies as they become available, and pursue opportunities for technology transitions.

To accomplish this objective, the Government anticipates issuing multiple calls for Swarm Sprints over the 42-month duration of the OFFSET program. The duration of each Swarm Sprint is generally expected to be six months, with an additional three-month option period to facilitate integration activities. The initiation and execution of these Swarm Sprints are anticipated to align with the respective capability-based experiments, as dictated by the Swarm Sprint Topics. This will ensure close interaction with the Swarm Systems Integrators and facilitate the demonstration of the proposed component and integrated technologies.

These Swarm Sprints are organized into five thrust areas or high-level research areas of interest to OFFSET, to include Swarm Tactics; Swarm Autonomy; Human-Swarm Teaming; Virtual Environment; and Physical Testbed. Table 1 provides a description of each of these thrust areas.

Table 1: Descriptions of Swarm Sprint Thrust Areas

Thrust Area Description

Swarm Tactics Design, development, assessment, and integration of swarm tactics aligned with OFFSET mission objectives and vignettes

Swarm Autonomy

Development of systems enablers for enhanced swarm autonomy, including both hardware and software along with associated tactics, primitives, and algorithms

Human-Swarm Teaming

Development, enhancement, and integration of novel human interface technologies, interaction modalities, and swarm grammar frameworks

Virtual Environment

Design, integration, and assessment of synthetic entities within the virtual game-based environment that enhance the platforms, sensors, networking, adversary, environmental, and other component elements

Physical Testbed

Design and integration of physically implementable technologies for augmenting physical testbed entities, to include additional platforms, sensors, infrastructure, computation, and experimental design

The Swarm Sprints are categorized further into Core Sprints and Ad Hoc Sprints (described below), the former relating to those Swarm Sprints anticipated to occur at regular six-month

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intervals in each of the thrust areas, and the latter allowing for instantiating “on-demand” swarm interest topics aligned with a specified thrust area.

Figure 1: Notional overall Swarm Sprint schedule. BAA Amendments announcing Swarm Sprints are anticipated to be released at approximate six-month intervals. Core Sprint timelines are subject to change.

Swarm Sprints in the five previously mentioned thrust areas will provide critical enhancements to the overall OFFSET program. Swarm Sprint performers in both Core and Ad Hoc Sprint activities are likely to be motivated by a number of incentivizing elements of the OFFSET program structure. Given that the outcomes of each Swarm Sprint will offer novel features and/or new capabilities for one or more of the Swarm Systems Integrators’ respective architectures, these integrators are inclined to adopt and showcase the most compelling and innovative Swarm Sprinter-developed contributions as part of their integration efforts. Further, the Swarm Sprinters may directly help inform and shape the evolution of the swarm technologies of interest to OFFSET, both through their close interactions and feedback with the Swarm Systems Integrator teams and also via their active contribution of feature requests, bug reports, and updates to the OFFSET code and knowledge base.

D. Swarm Sprint Description

This BAA amendment solicits proposals for a Core Sprint in Human-Swarm Teaming and the second Core Sprint in Swarm Tactics. No Ad Hoc Swarm Sprints are being announced in this amendment. Proposers may respond to more than one Swarm Sprint topic area; however, a separate, standalone proposal is required for each Swarm Sprint topic area.

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D.1. Core Sprint | Novel Interaction & Interface Modalities for Human-Swarm Teaming

Sprint At-A-Glance

Name: Interactions and Interfaces for Human-Swarm Teaming

Thrust Area: Human-Swarm Teaming

Purpose: Design, develop, and demonstrate novel interaction and interface modalities for enhanced human-swarm teaming

Figure 2: Enhanced human-swarm teaming technologies may offer new interaction and interface modalities, such as (a) pen/touch; (b) gestures; or (c) speech, for intuitively conveying commander’s intent by means of swarm tactics.

D.1.a. Swarm Sprint Description

i. Human-Swarm Teaming Description

The complexity of autonomous swarms encompasses not only the individual agent or collective groups, but also the introduction of human users or teammates, which adds another dimension of complexity and additional challenges therein.

What makes autonomous swarms research even more challenging (yet compelling) is the rapid pace at which swarm technologies and associated capabilities are advancing, which, while offering new contexts and use-cases to explore, may lead to numerous potentially disparate investigations and limited shared insights. Accordingly, unifying frameworks for interacting with autonomous swarms in human-swarm teams, as well as the technologies for interfacing with them, merit a concerted effort to accelerate potential breakthroughs for emerging swarm capabilities.

Previous supervisory and mixed-initiative control approaches have largely investigated contexts where explicit awareness and/or direction of individual team member activities are of interest, but are faced with cognitive and technical limitations when scaling to much larger swarm sizes and associated complexities. Future swarm systems must necessarily rely on increased autonomous capabilities required by – and also facilitated by – the swarm system as a whole, significantly greater than what current approaches to human interactions with multi-vehicle systems may presently offer. In concert, the technologies and mechanisms by which a human user interacts with such autonomous swarms must also be advanced to offer substantially richer capabilities to fully

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capitalize on the advances in the swarm autonomy.

OFFSET seeks to create a holistic framework by which to understand the mapping between the abstraction of commander’s intent translated into swarm tactics, and the associated interaction elements and interface modalities. This Swarm Sprint topic area will contribute to and enhance this framework, referred to as the “Swarm Interaction Grammar” (cf. the initial posting of the

OFFSET BAA# HR001117S0011).

The Swarm Interaction Grammar is intended to describe the combined representation of a given swarm tactic, its relevant interaction elements or parameters, the associated interface devices, and the interface modalities they activate. For example, a particular instance of a swarm tactic for “Secure a Perimeter” may call for the user to spatially designate the desired perimeter (i.e., the interaction element is a path on a map), for which one might design a pen or touch interface with a screen to input such a path, as illustrated by Figure 1(a). Another instantiation of the “Secure a Perimeter” swarm tactic might alternatively leverage previously agreed-upon building labels and automatically calculated stand-off distances to offer simpler verbal cueing of a target around which to establish a perimeter, such as in Figure 2(c). These examples highlight how different implementations of a swarm tactic can reflect different interaction and interface elements, offering myriad ways to robustly capture and align with the commander’s intent.

The scope of this Swarm Sprint is to design and develop new approaches for human-swarm interactions and/or new human-swarm interface technologies, including definition of appropriate metrics to assess usability, scalability, and efficacy through user validation studies of the proposed interactions and interfaces.

The Swarm Sprinter is asked to create novel user interfaces and interaction modalities to integrate with the swarm simulators and platforms being developed by the OFFSET Swarm Systems Integrator teams. Proposers responding to this BAA should seek to identify new frameworks and/or dramatically improve current ones to address human-swarm team performance, human-swarm situational awareness, and swarm control intuitiveness.

ii. Operational Context Description

To envision an OFFSET-empowered future operational backdrop, consider the scenario where the swarm systems form the “tactical swarm vanguard,” which serves the role of an advance party ahead of the main operating force (e.g., an infantry company or platoon). In this context of “recce” or “armed recon,” the swarm vanguard conducts surveillance of the area of operations, provides tactical situational awareness, prepares the battlespace, and/or initiates relevant activities to support the main unit’s mission objectives. The main force elements may advance to augment the swarm’s present activities, offering occasions for combined actions involving both human and autonomous swarm forces, as well as enabling the swarm to continue pressing forward as appropriate or necessitated by the mission.

Multiple user personas may be relevant for human-swarm teaming, as envisioned by OFFSET’s concepts of operations described above, to include:

1. Swarm mission planner – This user composes and assesses swarm tactics for execution of a future mission, leveraging available intelligence and using simulations to inform and explore anticipated evolutions of the mission and their likelihoods of achieving desired mission objectives.

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2. Swarm tactician, rear – This user is engaged in real-time and dynamic execution of swarm tactics during actual operations, and is situated in a protected and/or remote location (e.g., battalion headquarters or inside an armored command vehicle) away from the area of operations.

3. Swarm tactician, forward – This user is engaged in real-time and dynamic execution of swarm tactics during actual operations, and is physically present in the area of operations amidst units and the autonomous swarm conducting the mission, thereby required to interact with the swarm from within the combat environment.

4. Swarm tactics/autonomy developer – This user designs and composes new swarm tactics (potentially in conjunction with or in support of the swarm mission planner) and/or develops underlying swarm autonomy components (i.e., swarm primitives and/or swarm algorithms;

cf. OFFSET BAA # HR001117S0011, Amendment 2).

For the purposes of this Swarm Sprint, DARPA is interested in developing interaction and interface technologies supporting the end-user (i.e., warfighter using swarm personas 1-3), which will augment ongoing efforts by the Swarm Systems Integrators. As such, Swarm Sprint proposals should clearly articulate awareness of operational considerations, such as the environmental and ergonomic contexts of the different user types, especially in the context of integrating the proposed technologies for implementation and demonstration in live OFFSET field experimentation events at realistic urban test sites.

D.1.b. Technical Description

The goals of this Swarm Sprint topic are to: (1) explore and define novel interaction modalities, illuminate different swarm user personas, and highlight foundational approaches and new metaphors for human-swarm interaction with swarm tactics; and (2) expand and accelerate innovative interface technologies, investigate efficacy of different interface modalities, and gain unique insights into their respective affordances or abilities to convey information. DARPA seeks high-caliber proposals that address either or both of these goals specifically at the swarm tactics level (as opposed to inputs or outputs at lower levels of abstraction, i.e., swarm primitives or swarm algorithms).

Swarm Sprinters are expected to offer contributions that are suitable and/or compatible for implementation in one or both of the OFFSET Swarm Systems Architectures. Proposed approaches should ideally leverage Swarm Systems Integrator-developed hardware and software architectures and game-based synthetic environments that offer both a physical and a virtual world in which relevant urban operational scenarios can be explored. Potential Swarm Sprinters are encouraged to reach out to the Swarm Systems Integrator teams to learn about their ongoing swarm interaction and interface development efforts comprising technologies such as virtual reality, pen/touch, speech, etc. to distinguish the proposer’s potential contributions and/or accentuate their own innovations within the OFFSET architecture(s).

Strong proposals should articulate quantifiable metrics on swarm systems and human performance, that is, measures of both the effectiveness of the swarm’s execution and the efficacy of the user’s experience. Detailed discussions of technical plans for conducting validation studies in the context of one or more of the relevant swarm user personas are essential, as they will help inform the viability for potential follow-on development efforts, should DARPA choose to pursue them further.

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Enhancing Human-Swarm Interaction Modalities and Models

DARPA is interested in creating a foundational framework for describing, implementing, and optimizing human-swarm interactions. As previously referenced, the Swarm Interaction Grammar is envisioned as a mapping between swarm tactics and appropriate interaction elements and associated interface modalities to specifically address the dispersed, decentralized, and/or dynamic characteristics in autonomous swarms operating in complex environments.

Proposers may consider innovative approaches that augment or accelerate the user’s ability to influence and/or infer swarm mission effectiveness through enhancements to human-swarm interaction approaches. Examples of such concepts may include (but are not limited to):

- Generation and representation of courses-of-action (COAs) resulting from the selection and/or composition of different swarm tactics, including approaches that offer performance estimates and/or execution guarantees;

- Optimized allocation of roles and/or functions between the swarm and (potentially multiple) human users, as related to specific swarm tactics and/or swarm missions;

- Exploration and enhancement of highly interactive, artificial intelligence-based frameworks, such as chatbots or virtual assistants, to offer expedient and effective tactical decision support;

- “Explainability” of swarm tactics’ effectiveness in relevant user contexts, e.g., during planning (via “preview” modes) as well as during execution (via “prediction” modes) potentially leveraging advances in intent recognition.

Highly innovative proposals should articulate technical approaches demonstrating and/or resulting in rigorous theoretical, computational, or empirical studies of both the relevance and performance of the proposed work. Proposals should describe in sufficient detail how such performance is intended to be measured and validated (e.g., user studies, simulation analysis).

Advancing Innovative Interfaces for Human-Swarm Teams

Choice of the interface modality and associated devices greatly affects the usability and efficacy of the overall human-swarm interface, which translates to measurable quantities such as cognitive workload and swarm situational awareness, and ultimately impacts mission performance, as manifested through the user’s selection and swarm systems’ execution of particular swarm tactics.

Further, new interface technologies are rapidly developing, due to the ubiquity and advances in miniaturization of sensing and computation; immersive and interactive environments (virtual or mixed); pervasive mobile devices; available wearable technologies, and maturing noninvasive bio-physiological sensors.

OFFSET seeks to explore the relevance and richness of such interfaces for conveying salient swarm tactics information to and from the swarm systems. Proposals may consider innovative technologies which have the potential to dramatically improve the user’s experience. Examples may include (but are not limited to) concepts relating to:

- Highly multi-modal interfaces via fusion of different modalities, offering not only redundancy of information pathways but also enabling optimized and context-dependent content;

- Development of robust and/or ruggedized augmented reality systems for in situ (potentially multi-user) engagements with future swarm system capabilities, e.g., swarm tactics preview

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overlays, multi-viewpoints, see-through visualizations, or beyond-line-of-sight presentation of swarm activities and/or unit operations;

- Novel designs for tactile interfaces (e.g., “living clay,” futuristic sandtable, or other tabletop tangible interfaces) for geometric and dynamic representations of swarms;

- Advanced haptic interfaces (such as gloves, vests, or other body-worn apparel) with significantly high-dimensional and/or high-resolution signaling;

- Innovative extraction of user’s intent for swarm tactics selection or presentation from wearables and/or ruggedized bio-physiological sensors (e.g., eye-tracking, EMG bands, heartrate monitors).

Potential Swarm Sprinters should clearly describe how their innovative technologies are pushing boundaries in user interface elements to support novel interaction methods, including ones external to those implemented by the Swarm Systems Integrators. User interfaces can be novel either in technology or in application, and proposed efforts likely should advance in both areas. Proposed developments should ideally meet contemporary usability standards in being easy-to-use, requiring minimal training to learn, and accounting for environmental context, including ergonomics.

Integration of Human-Swarm Teaming Technologies

OFFSET is broadly interested in enhancements to one or both of the current Swarm Systems Integrator-developed hardware and software architectures through the introduction of innovative swarm interaction methods and swarm user interfaces to improve the performance of the human-swarm team in urban operations. Proposals offering to develop and integrate their interaction and/or interface technologies in both the virtual environment and physical testbed are strongly preferred, with particular interest in those proposals holistically leveraging both to accelerate efforts towards implementation and demonstration in live OFFSET capabilities-based experimentation event(s).

The Swarm Systems Integrators’ architectures offer extensible and open interfaces, such as the Robot Operating System (ROS) and use of open-source game development environments (i.e., Unreal Engine and Unity3D), to facilitate integration and interoperability across multiple Swarm Systems Integrators and Swarm Sprinters. Swarm Sprinters are highly encouraged to make use of the Swarm Integrator Portals (see more details below) to acquire more specific details about each Swarm Systems Integrator’s software and hardware interfaces. Swarm Sprinters are encouraged to consider development of their proposed innovations in both Swarm Systems Integrator architectures, if feasible. However, proposals focusing efforts on a single architecture are acceptable and should specifically highlight which distinguishing features between the architectures inspire or require preferential development.

Swarm Integrator Portals are public websites developed and maintained by the respective Swarm Systems Integrators. These online portals provide up-to-date information on currently available swarm systems technologies, including specifications of platform hardware components, software application programming interfaces (APIs), and simulation environment usage documentation.

The Swarm Integrator Portals also provide community features that allow the broader swarm research and development community to interact with the Swarm Systems Integrator teams.

Swarm Sprinters are encouraged to engage with the Swarm Systems Integrator teams to facilitate their technology integration plans. Details for the Swarm Systems Integrators and links to the

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Swarm Integrator Portals can be found on the DARPA OFFSET landing page at https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/offensive-swarm-enabled-tactics.

Where applicable, an Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval must be obtained prior to execution of any human subject research to ensure activities will be carried out in accordance with Department of the Navy (DON) Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) regulations and guidance related to human-subject experimentation. Given the short duration of this Swarm Sprint, proposers are encouraged to make use of existing approved IRB protocols if available, or to explicitly articulate plans to expedite approval of an IRB protocol. Selected Swarm Sprint performers are expected to follow all current IRB protocol requirements put forward by OFFSET and conform to appropriate regulations prior to conducting any human subject research.

Proposed statements of work and budgets should structure and explicitly identify separable tasks specifically pertaining to activities related to the execution of human subjects research (e.g., recruitment of participants, interaction with human subjects). Absence of such delineations may potentially negatively impact the sprint timeline for contracting and commencement of work.

Proposals should include a usability testing plan as relevant to interaction and/or interface technologies (i.e., hardware and/or software) developed during this Swarm Sprint. Operationally relevant contexts for environmental and ergonomic considerations (such as in-field legibility of displays, device durability, viability of voice communications, accessibility of touch screens, etc.)

are of general interest; however, these considerations should not overly constrain potentially innovative or disruptive approaches.

D.1.c. Programmatic Description

This Swarm Sprint is envisioned as a six-month base period-of-performance plus three-month option effort. Included in this six-month base effort is the use and integration with one or both of the Swarm Systems Integrator architectures, and the option effort is focused on additional integration and readiness testing towards demonstration in live OFFSET field experimentation event(s). The proposed level of effort should clearly state and reflect the proposer’s technical and program management approach to integrate their proposed contributions with one or both of the Swarm Systems Integrators’ architectures.

The focus of the option period is to, if exercised, facilitate integration and demonstration of the proposed technologies in an upcoming OFFSET capability-based experimentation event, anticipated to occur in Fall 2019. For physically realizable proposals, this effort will involve the development of or inclusion within appropriate experimental contexts to showcase the technology as integrated into the OFFSET swarm experimentation scenarios. For user interface integrations, this effort will include development and implementation of test conditions to physically simulate or stimulate the use of the proposed interfaces. A usability study report is required at the conclusion of the Swarm Sprint that captures and characterizes improvements in user performance beyond previously established baselines, as well as identifies additional user needs for potential future development.

https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/offensive-swarm-enabled-tactics

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D.1.d. Deliverables for this Swarm Sprint

It is anticipated that deliverables for this Swarm Sprint will consist of the following at a minimum:

Deliverable Frequency Format Description

Interaction/Interface Development and Usability Testing

Plan

One (1) month after contract award

Contractor format

Provide detailed descriptions of planned development methodologies and supporting materials as appropriate. Provide detailed usability testing materials and all planned supporting materials. Documentation should articulate inclusion of traditional usability best practices. Also, if applicable, provide appropriate IRB documentation to show approval has been, or imminently will be, obtained for OFFSET.

Usability Test Results and Raw Data from

Study

One (1) month prior to contract end

Contractor format

Include a brief summarized report, and a copy of all raw data obtained during testing.

If applicable, any personally identifying information (e.g., name of participant) should be contained on the IRB Informed Consent document. Video recordings and/or Informed Consent documents should be transferred to the principal investigators (as identified in IRB documentation) for proper storage of the materials.

Interaction/Interface Development Report

15 days prior to contract end

Contractor Format

Provide any supporting and generated interaction/interface software and hardware, to include: any hardware associated with the development of the user interaction and/or interface elements, and all software developed for the user interaction and/or interface elements.

Integration Plan

One (1) month after contract award

Contractor format

Detail how the Swarm Sprint efforts will develop within the context of one or both Swarm Systems Integrators’ architectures and hardware/software interfaces. This document should reflect firm technical understanding, tasks, and schedule of integration activities, including engagement with Swarm Systems Integrators.

Progress Report Monthly Microsoft PowerPoint

Include a summary of results and technical accomplishments, planned actions for the next reporting period, descriptive and graphical representations of work being completed, and all relevant financial information, including updates to financial

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spend plan (i.e., by task and by month), current and cumulative expenditures, open commitments, and explanation of deltas between planned and actual costs/plans.

Technical Data Package

15 days prior to contract end

Contractor format

Provide any supporting and generated technical data, to include: simulation elements, e.g., 3D graphics and models;

generated and/or captured videos;

benchmark sensor datasets; and simulation validation analysis and results.

Final Report

15 days prior to contract end

Microsoft Word

Provide a detailed description of the developed technologies and impact on demonstrated and potential swarm interaction and/or interface capabilities. The report should also provide a detailed quantitative analysis of relevant metrics, to include, e.g., usability metrics and user performance metrics. Additionally, this report should contain the finalized Usability Study report.

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D.2. Core Sprint | Swarm Tactics for Vignette 2

D.2.a. Swarm Sprint Description

i. Operational Swarm Tactics Description

A key component of the OFFSET program is the generation of an extensive playbook of swarm tactics that disruptively create new opportunities for future swarm systems in urban operations.

Swarm Sprinters will be leveraging Swarm Systems Integrator-developed hardware/software architectures and game-based environments that offer both a physical and a virtual world in which relevant operational scenarios, such as urban operations, can be extensively explored and expanded. OFFSET aims to generate and assess 100+ swarm tactics that enable a heterogeneous swarm to achieve the desired objective capabilities described in Section I.B.1.c (found in the initial posting of BAA# HR001117S0011) and summarized in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Objective capabilities of interest for surrogate aerial and ground autonomous swarm systems

Operational Context Vignette 1 Vignette 2 Vignette 3

Representative Mission

Isolate an urban objective

Conduct an urban raid

Seize key urban terrain

Mission Duration 15-30 minutes 1-2 hours 4-6 hours Area of

Operations approx. two square city blocks approx. four square city blocks approx. eight square city blocks Swarm Size 50 100 250

Sprint At-A-Glance

Name: Swarm Tactics for Vignette 2

Thrust Area: Operational Swarm Tactics

Purpose: Design and implement one or more swarm tactics of operational relevance for a heterogeneous swarm conducting an urban raid.

Figure 3: Design, development, and demonstration of innovative and operationally relevant swarm tactics inform and enhance the OFFSET Swarm Tactics Exchanges

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ii. Vignette 2 Decomposition

The focus of this Core Swarm Sprint is the generation of swarm tactics for Vignette 2 in which a heterogeneous swarm of 100 agents is employed to conduct an urban raid within an area of four square city blocks over a mission duration of 1-2 hours. Given the varying terrains of urbanized areas, the mission battlespace could include high rises, industrial/commercial buildings, or residential sprawl. For this Swarm Sprint effort, the outdoor environment is assumed to consist of buildings that are 3-10 stories high with streets that are 10-25 meters wide and relatively unconstrained (e.g., no complex overhangs or power lines). The indoor environments are expected to be relatively unconstrained (e.g., open doors), but mildly cluttered (some obstacles, but navigable paths). All friendly forces can be assumed to be known and/or easily distinguishable.

The environment will have a mixture of neutral and opponent forces which can be difficult to differentiate.

Referencing Marine Corps Warfighting Publication (MCWP) 12-10B.1, an offensive urban operation can be divided into a series of four phases: reconnoiter the objective; isolate the objective; secure a foothold; and seize the objective. The scope of Vignette 1 covers the first two phases, and Vignette 2 and 3 extend to the latter two phases, which can be described as:

Reconnoiter the Objective: Gathering of intelligence such as avenues of approach, supply routes, ingress and egress points, infrastructure and utilities, locations of enemy combatants, and other information that may not be apparent in existing databases or maps;

Isolate the Objective: Denying the enemy the ability to maneuver or reinforce by impeding the flow of manpower, supplies, weapons, and communications;

Secure a Foothold: Providing the attacking force with a position from which they can continue the assault through the objective area;

Seize the Objective: Pushing forces to clear or control the objective area, including consolidation of the objective area and reorganization for future tasking.

For illustrative purposes, consider the following narrative scenario of a representative mission that spans the OFFSET vignettes:

A rifle company is tasked with taking and holding a block of structures in a built-up urban area. They must isolate, attack, and hold a series of buildings as part of a coordinated battalion-level effort to take the city. Using intelligence, the company commander prioritizes the target buildings and assigns platoons to each urban objective.

Each platoon, deploying from their assembly area, must maneuver to the objective area, conduct reconnaissance, and secure a perimeter to interdict enemy manpower, supplies, and communications. The company and attached elements provide support for each platoon action, including direct or indirect fires.

Individual squads from the platoons must seize each building and conduct search for enemy combatants, improvised explosives devices, and other hazards while attempting to minimize the risks to fellow warfighters and non-combatants.

(Vignette 2’s primary focus)

Once the urban objectives have been secured the company must prepare for counter http://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-Library-Display/Article/900535/mcrp-12-10b1-formerly-mcwp-3-353/

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offensives by establishing security and communications, clearing fields of fire, selecting fighting positions, and establishing routes between positions.

Relevant to the above scenario, examples of operationally relevant tactics for Vignette 2 may include (but are not limited to):

Identify ingress and egress points to an area of operation

Identify, localize, and track opposing force personnel

Identify and defend against possible attack vectors

Employ military deception with decoys or feints

Provide persistent surveillange over an area of operations

Maintain connectivity for friendly mobile forces

Maintain sensor network with automated resource management

Localize origins of enemy fire

Search and clear target buildings for warfighter threats

Search for and disseminate high value intel

Locate and clear non-combatents from objectives

Locate and target opponent assets for company fires

D.2.b. Technical Description

Referencing the OFFSET Swarm Tactics framework described in Section I.A (found in the initial posting of BAA# HR001117S0011), the central focus of OFFSET is the generation of swarm tactics, which may comprise one or more swarm primitives, which themselves may further comprise one or more swarm algorithms.

In response to this Core Swarm Sprint, proposed swarm tactics should specifically address the needs and scales of the “Conduct an Urban Raid” mission, and highlight how the disaggregated and heterogeneous capabilities distributed among the swarm can explicitly exploit or mitigate the urban characteristics of challenging verticality, restricted movement, and limited visibility. Such proposed contributions of a Swarm Sprinter could reflect the development of:

A single swarm tactic with a fixed set of swarm primitives but multiple swarm algorithm implementations;

A set of similar swarm tactics that uses numerous common swarm primitives and/or swarm algorithms;

Multiple dissimilar tactics that address a variety of mission objectives and use numerous common swarm primitives and/or swarm algorithms.

The Swarm Sprinter development effort should focus on novel swarm tactics that achieve high-level operational objectives rather than the underlying primitives or algorithms (e.g., collision-avoidance, image processing). However, proposals may consider and leverage novel primitives or algorithms if they are essential to the proposed swarm tactics. Proposals are encouraged to leverage existing and/or open-source algorithms and libraries. Parametric variation at the primitive or algorithm levels is not of interest for OFFSET (e.g., via manual tuning of gains or parameters with a given algorithm to modulate or optimize performance).

Swarm Sprinter proposals should include a plan to rigorously evaluate the performance of each

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swarm tactic against the stated mission objectives through the extensive use of one or both of the OFFSET-developed game-based environments. This assessment should be performed across a diverse mission parameter space, with rationale for specific factor ranges provided using rigorous statistical analysis methods (e.g., Monte Carlo simulations). Analysis scripts, output data, and detailed results should be provided as a deliverable to DARPA. Swarm Sprinters should also provide OFFSET simulation-based or physical demo videos that clearly demonstrate the functionality of each swarm tactic, including any user inputs and relevant unique variants of the given swarm tactic. The quality and utility of these artifacts are expected to aid in DARPA’s decisions (e.g., exercising options) to pursue additional integration and demonstration of the Swarm Sprinter’s results into an OFFSET test setting.

Swarm Systems Architecture(s) Integration

OFFSET is broadly interested in enhancements to one or both of the current Swarm Systems Integrator-developed architectures through the introduction of operationally relevant and innovative swarm tactics for autonomous swarms in urban operations. Proposals offering to develop and integrate their interaction and/or interface technologies in both the virtual environment and physical testbed are strongly preferred, with particular interest in those proposals holistically leveraging both to accelerate efforts towards implementation and demonstration in live OFFSET capabilities-based experimentation event(s).

The Swarm Systems Integrators’ architectures offer extensible and open interfaces, such as the Robot Operating System (ROS) and use of open-source game development environments (i.e., Unreal Engine and Unity3D), to facilitate integration and interoperability across multiple Swarm Systems Integrators and Swarm Sprinters. Swarm Sprinters are highly encouraged to make use of the Swarm Integrator Portals (see more details below) to acquire more specific details about each Swarm Systems Integrator’s software and hardware interfaces. Swarm Sprinters are encouraged to consider development of their proposed innovations in both Swarm Systems Integrator architectures, if feasible. However, proposals focusing efforts on a single architecture are acceptable and should specifically highlight which distinguishing features between the architectures inspire or require preferential development.

Proposals for this Swarm Sprint should primarily develop swarm tactics that address the stated mission objectives of Vignette 2. Swarm tactics developed for this Swarm Sprint should be reasonably feasible to integrate into a swarm comprising small air and ground vehicles using mostly commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and low size, weight, and power (SWaP) components.

The fixed-wing and multirotor airframes are in the Group 1 (9kg) category, while the ground vehicles weigh less than 50kg. The swarm tactics and associated algorithms should be reasonably feasible to execute using common low-cost embedded computers (e.g., ODroid XU4, Jetson TX1/TX2), COTS sensors (e.g., cameras), and low-SWaP communication solutions (e.g., WiFi networking). Proposals for technology that require resources beyond these limitations are acceptable but should then include appropriate justifications and actual performance specifications, as well as should propose relevant contexts or actual experiments that would demonstrate the benefit of their technology for swarms. Replicating and validating the capability in simulations to show how the proposed technology could be deployed once the SWaP requirements are met is also acceptable.

Swarm Integrator Portals are public websites developed and maintained by the respective Swarm

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Systems Integrators. These online portals provide up-to-date information on currently available swarm systems technologies, including specifications of platform hardware components, software application programming interfaces (APIs), and simulation environment usage documentation.

The Swarm Integrator Portals also provide community features that allow the broader swarm research and development community to interact with the Swarm Systems Integrator teams.

Swarm Sprinters are encouraged to engage with the Swarm Systems Integrator teams to facilitate their technology integration plans. Successful Swarm Sprinters will maintain frequent and active contact with the Swarm Systems Integrator teams during their sprint duration to ensure their contributions integrate well into the selected OFFSET swarm architecture(s). Details for the Swarm Systems Integrators and links to the Swarm Integrator Portals can be found on the DARPA OFFSET landing page at https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/offensive-swarm-enabled-tactics.

D.2.c. Programmatic Description

This Swarm Sprint is envisioned as a six-month base effort for swarm tactics development and integration with one or both of the Swarm Systems Integrators’ architectures. Upon completing the six-month base period, a three-month option period may be exercised to integrate promising and/or validated swarm tactics into the live OFFSET Vignette 2 field experiments. Integration for the field events requires testing and assessment of the developed swarm tactics on real-world systems and environments, as well as informing the development of fiducials or other test elements to facilitate integration with the field experiment test scenario design.

Swarm tactics of interest to DARPA for integration will be selected based on their demonstrated performance in virtual and/or physical contexts in one or more of the Swarm Systems Architectures, their operational relevance to Vignette 2, and the expected level of effort to facilitate preparation, deployment, and demonstration at OFFSET field experiments.

D.2.d. Deliverables for this Swarm Sprint

It is anticipated that deliverables for this Swarm Sprint will consist of the following at a minimum:

De…