Notice of Sole Source to Florida International University

1.0 Background/Introduction: The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research (CAVR) has a distinguished history of robotic technology development, including Unmanned Aerial (UAVs), Surface (USVs), and Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), which include Autonomous Underwater (AUV) and Remotely Operated (ROV) vehicles. For this project, CAVR is collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center (JSC) to quantify the benefits of autonomy in robotic assistive systems on mission effectiveness, efficiency, and safety for joint robot-human operations. The project outcome is of interest to NPS sponsors, as well as, NASA.



CAVR will participate in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) event, which will take place during the period of 07/01/2016 - 08/31/2016 at the Florida International University (FIU) Aquarius underwater habitat in Key Largo, FL. During this event, Aquanauts stay in the Aquarius habitat for the duration of the mission and perform daily tasks, including joint human-robot tasks.



2.0 Scope:

FIU will provide access to the Aquarius underwater habitat and associated surface support to the NPS CAVR team, NASA JSC team, and NASA Aquanauts as negotiated by NASA JSC for the NEEMO 21 event. The Aquarius habitat is the only pressurized aquatic facility in the world that allows long-term saturation dive operations. This facility allows persistent NASA Aquanaut operations, analogous to Extravehicular Activities (aka Spacewalks). These analogous operations allow for joint robot-human operations, providing CAVR an opportunity to introduce and evaluate robotic technologies for joint robot-human tasks.



NPS CAVR requires support for seven days of operations during the period of 07/01/2016 08/31/2016