SOLICITATION NOTICE
A -- AUTONOMOUS REAL-TIME GROUND UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE ? IMAGING SYSTEM (ARGUS-IS)
- Notice Date
- 2/20/2007
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- NAICS
- 541710
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences
- Contracting Office
- Other Defense Agencies, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Contracts Management Office, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA, 22203-1714, UNITED STATES
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- BAA07-23
- Response Due
- 4/9/2007
- Archive Date
- 4/24/2007
- Description
- DESCRIPTION Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) SOL BAA 07-23, DUE: 26 March 2007; POC: Dr. Brian Leininger, DARPA/IXO; FAX: (571) 218-4529. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Information Exploitation Office (IXO) is soliciting proposals for the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) program under this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). BACKGROUND: Finding, tracking and monitoring events and activities of interest on a continuous basis remains one of our highest Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) requirements. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) including the Predator Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) serve as one of the warfighter's primary and most responsive means for surveillance and gathering intelligence information and are becoming vital assets in military operations. This is demonstrated by their significant use in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Lessons learned from these operations indicate that UAVs provide critical capabilities for enhancing situational awareness, intelligence gathering and force protection for our military forces. Current UAS high-resolution electro-optics (EO) offer a narrow high-resolution field of view (FOV). This narrow FOV is a limiting factor on the utility of the EO system. The UAS that are available offer persistence; however, the effectiveness of the EO system is limited by the sensors and available processing. ARGUS-IS will advance technologies and systems that will enable wide area persistent surveillance thereby provide greatly enhanced situational awareness to the warfighter. These technologies and systems will be transitioned to various partners and customers. Participants will work closely with the transition partners to aid in this process. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES/DESCRIPTION: The objective of the ARGUS-IS program is to develop a system that provides a real-time, high-resolution, wide area video persistent surveillance capability and transition this capability to the military. The ARGUS-IS program is seeking to provide an expanding range of capabilities enabling wide area persistent surveillance. ARGUS-IS is composed of three major technology components/subsystems, a Gigapixel Sensor Subsystem, an Airborne Processing Subsystem and a Ground Processing Subsystem. The ARGUS-IS Airborne Subsystem is formed by integrating the Gigapixel Sensor and Airborne Processing Subsystems together. The packaging of the airborne subsystems should be compatible with a variety of UAS including Extended Range/Multiple Purpose (ER/MP), Aerostat, and A-160 (Hummingbird). The ARGUS-IS system will be tested and evaluated during a series of flight experiments utilizing a surrogate UAV. It is expected that a 200 megabit per second data link will be utilized for these flight experiments. The goal for first set of capabilities that are being developed is to provide multiple video windows within the field-of-view (FOV) that are being continuously imaged via a gigapixle sensor. The desire is to transmit each video window to a user on the ground, which would look like a dedicated sensor within the gigapixel sensor's FOV. The types of functionality for each of the video windows includes; operating at variable resolutions, variable update rates, electronically steerable video windows from anyplace within the system's FOV, have the ability to track a designated target within a window and keep the target within the video window's FOV. Further functionality is envisioned through the addition of a moving target indicator (MTI) mode for vehicles. In this mode the system will track all vehicles within the FOV. The Government is interested in solutions to the following components/subsystems: - Gigapixel Sensor: The Gigapixel Sensor is a complete subsystem containing the focal plane arrays, optics, gimbal, mechanical stabilization and a means of controlling where the sensor is pointed. - Airborne Processing and System Integration: The Airborne Processing Subsystem takes the pixels produced by the Gigapixel Sensor and does all necessary image processing. The Airborne Processing Subsystem consists of the airborne processing hardware, software, and data recording. This effort also includes the integration of the airborne elements into an airborne subsystem and the integration of the airborne and ground subsystems. - Ground Processing: The ground processing provides for the data link management system control and system information distribution. The system software will operate in the server in conjunction with a set of distributed common clients to provide for integrated ground functionality that can be easily integrated into current and future warfighter ground station systems. ARGUS-IS will be composed of three phases, the first phase is a design and component build phase, followed by a video window and moving target indicator phases. At the discretion of the Government, the initiation of later phases (i.e., Phases 2 and 3) is contingent upon the availability of funding and the Government's determination that system-level performance goals established for earlier phases were met. - Phase I - Design and component build: During Phase 1, the design of the overall system and subsystems will be performed. In addition, critical elements of the subsystems may be built. This includes both critical hardware elements as well as software elements. - Phase 2- Video Window Functionality: During Phase 2, the ARGUS-IS Subsystem build will be completed, the subsystems integrated together and the Video Window functionality will be demonstrated in a series of flight experiments. It is expected that the first flight experiment will happen midway through this phase of the program. At the end of this phase of the program, this functionality may be transitioned by DARPA to interested research, industrial, and operational military communities. - Phase 3- Moving Target Indicator: During Phase 3, the MTI functionality will be integrated into the operational software and flight tests of this capability will take place. SELECTION CRITERIA: Proposals will be selected through a technical/ scientific/ business decision process, with technical and scientific considerations being most important. Evaluations will be performed using the following criteria, listed in descending order of relative importance: (1) Technical Innovation and Depth; (2) Relevance to the ARGUS-IS Mission Objectives and Consistency with ARGUS-IS Program Concepts; (3) Cost Realism and Reasonableness; (4) Realism of Proposed Schedule; and (5) Personnel and Corporate Capabilities and Experience. Further details may be found in the PIP, which can be accessed at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address provided in the next section. TECHNICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE INQUIRIES: DARPA intends to use electronic mail for correspondence regarding BAA 07-23. Technical, contractual, or administrative questions must be submitted to - BAA07-23@darpa.mil. Answers to all questions generally relevant to the technical, contractual, and administrative aspects of the solicitation will be posted for public access at http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/solicitations.asp#0723 under the title Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION: The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement and to award without discussions. All responsible sources may submit a proposal that shall be considered by DARPA. Small Disadvantaged Businesses and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)/Minority Institutions (MIs) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of technology for exclusive competition among these entities. Government contractors are required to register at the Government?s Central Contractor Registration site in order to negotiate contracts with most government agencies. This URL is provided as a reference: http://www.ccr.gov. Since this FedBizOpps Announcement, along with the PIP, constitutes a Broad Agency Announcement, as contemplated in the FAR 6.102 (d)(2)(i), all prospective proposers MUST also refer to the PIP before submitting a proposal. Original Point of Contact: Michael Blackstone, Contracting Officer, Fax (703) 741-0081, email BAA07-23@darpa.mil.
- Record
- SN01235427-W 20070222/070220223023 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
| FSG Index | This Issue's Index | Today's FBO Daily Index Page |