The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency released a special notice, inviting participation in its Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment programme — offering capabilities, methodologies and approaches that could enable more autonomy and collaborative operations for military drones.
CODE, as the programme is dubbed, would enable groups of unmanned aerial systems to work together under a single human commander’s supervision. According to the announcement, unmanned vehicles would continuously evaluate themselves and their environment and present recommendations for UAV team actions to the mission supervisor who would approve, disapprove or direct the team to collect more data. The aircraft themselves would find targets and engage them as appropriate under established rules of engagement, leverage nearby CODE-equipped systems with minimal supervision, and adapt to dynamic situations, such as attrition of friendly forces or the emergence of unanticipated threats, DARPA noted.
“Just as wolves hunt in coordinated packs with minimal communication, multiple CODE-enabled unmanned aircraft would collaborate to find, track, identify and engage targets, all under the command of a single human mission supervisor,” said Jean-Charles Ledé, DARPA programme manager. “Further, CODE aims to decrease the reliance of these systems on high-bandwidth communication and a deep crew bench while expanding the potential spectrum of missions through combinations of assets — all at lower overall costs of operation. These capabilities would greatly enhance survivability and effectiveness of existing air platforms in denied environments.”
DARPA is hosting two meetings for those interested in contributing to the programme. The open architecture meeting will review the requirements and approach for making the CODE open architecture compatible with “communication-constrained, distributed, highly autonomous collaborative systems,” according to DARPA. And the technology interchange meeting will be an opportunity for invited participants to present technologies for potential incorporation into the demonstration planned for Phases 2 and 3 of the programme.
The meetings are scheduled for the first week of March in the Arlington area. In the meantime, to be considered for attendance to the meetings, interested parties are invited to submit a one-page response to DARPA by Feb. 4.
Source: Washington Business Journal