Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714

A -- IMAGE UNDERSTANDING IN BATTLEFIELD AWARENESS (IUBA) SOL BAA96-14 DUE 072396 POC Dr. Thomas M. Strat, DARPA/ISO, Fax (703) 696-2201. Due to the possibility of transcription errors, the official CBD announcement takes precedence over this transcription in any disagreement between the two. The transcription is provided for your convenience only.IMAGE UNDERSTANDING IN BATTLEFIELD AWARENESS (IUBA) SOL BAA96-14 DUE 23 JULY 1996 POC Dr. Thomas M Strat, (Technical) DARPA/ISO, FAX: (703) 696-2201. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office is soliciting proposals for research and new technology development related to image understanding (IU) for battlefield awareness. Comprehensive battlefield awareness will provide US military forces a decisive advantage in future military actions--image understanding is one of the key technologies that will fulfill the requirements for battlefield awareness. The future battlefield is characterized by a rapidly expanding suite of sensors and sensing modalities collecting unprecedented volumes of imagery from a mixture of ground, air, and space-borne platforms. Image understanding techniques are needed to extract the information needed by military forces from this data-rich environment. Proposals are sought that address one of the following technical areas: (1) Imagery Exploitation, (2) Automatic Population of Geospatial Databases, (3) Video Surveillance and Monitoring, and (4) Automatic Target Recognition University Research Initiative. In Technical Area 4, Proposals may be submitted only by U.S. Institutions of higher education (other than federal government) with degree-granting programs in science and/or engineering, or by consortia lead by such institutions.TECHNICAL AREA DESCRIPTIONS: 1) Image Exploitation (IE): The objective of the Image Exploitation Technical Area is to push the development of IU technology so that IU systems can provide comprehensive interactive support to tactical imagery analysts in identifying and tracking military forces and force movements. A flood of imagery will be collected by planned Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Because the volume of imagery is so great compared to planned image analyst (IA) staffing levels, the objective is revolutionary change in image exploitation, not incremental improvement in IA productivity. A secondary objective of this technical area is to stimulate the IU research community to focus on the problems of IU involving multiple looks and multiple sensing modalities. 2) Automatic Population of Geospatial Databases (APGD): The objective of this Technical Area is rapid and low-cost automatic population of geospatial databases, from a variety of imagery sources, to serve imagery exploitation and synthetic environment applications. IU methods are sought to automate the extraction of 3D cartographic features and their attributes from imagery. Geospatial databases contain terrain, features, static and dynamic objects and associated attributes, with the geometric and semantic resolution, precision, and confidence metrics appropriate to one or more anticipated applications. A given database will serve several classes of users. Advanced IU techniques are needed to dramatically reduce the time required to construct geospatial databases. 3) Video Surveillance and Monitoring (VSAM): The objective of VSAM is automated video understanding technology which may be used in future urban and battlefield surveillance and monitoring applications, where human visual monitoring is too costly, too dangerous, or otherwise impractical. In the future, one human operator at a remote host workstation may supervise many VSAM platforms to perform military battle area and urban surveillance operations. Processing technology will have advanced markedly to allow the processing of video streams of data, as opposed to individual video frames. The VSAM platforms (stationary, moving on the ground, or airborne) will be networked, having multiple visual sensors and integral, autonomous VSAM processing and control. The platforms will have steerable, controllable sensors and may cooperate, sharing tasks or computation. The platforms will be capable of day/night operations. The platforms should be largely autonomous, notifying the operator of only salient information and engaging the operator minimally to alter platform operations or resolve platform problems. Accordingly, it is anticipated that the use of a great deal of spatial and temporal knowledge and context (in addition to video/image processing), will be essential to VSAM performance. 4) Automatic Target Recognition - University Research Initiative (ATR-URI): The objective of this Technical Area is the development of unique, innovative and revolutionary Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) techniques. These techniques may address Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Electro-Optical (EO), Infrared (IR), Low-Light Television (LLTV), video (both visible red/green/blue and black/white cameras), or Laser Radar (LADAR) imagery collected from airborne or ground-based surveillance and targeting platforms. APPROACH: Awards will be made in two categories: (A) Integrated Feasibility Demonstrations (IFDs), and (B) Focused Research Efforts (FREs). (A) Integrated Feasibility Demonstrations (IFDs): Of interest are efforts to build relevant, application ready, software-based, end-to-end systems that provide unique or novel embedded IU capabilities in one of the Technical Areas 1-3 listed above, and can be demonstrated and evaluated within a reusable, instrumented, software-based infrastructure based on emergent object-oriented industry standards. IFD offerors must address an image understanding application defined in the description of Technical Areas, implement the software technologies in a quasi-operational environment, measure the effectiveness of the IU tools and techniques, and have the potential to provide the commander with an enhanced awareness of the battlefield. Innovative approaches to facilitate the transition of those research results into other application programs sponsored by DARPA or other DoD organizations are desired. (B) Focused Research Efforts (FREs): Of interest are new research efforts that emphasize the search for revolutionary advances in image understanding algorithms and are focused on one of the Technical Areas under consideration in this BAA. Proposed efforts should complement previous accomplishments from the Image Understanding program and lead to the development of a testable demonstration within 24 months. The demonstration will provide an environment to prove out the concept and will be the basis for committing further resources required for more complete investigation and testing. Proposals for IFDs will be considered in Technical Areas 1, 2, and 3. Proposals for FRE's will be considered in all 4 Technical Areas. DARPA intends to select one IFD proposal and multiple FRE proposals for award in each Technical Area, but reserves the right to determine the number of awards, including none, in any category. Awards in all Technical Areas are anticipated in the first quarter of the 1997 federal fiscal year. GENERAL INFORMATION: SUBMISSION: In order to minimize unnecessary effort in proposal preparation and review, proposers are strongly encouraged to submit a proposal abstract of no more than 8 pages including cover page in advance of full proposals. An original and five (6) copies of the proposal abstract must be submitted to Dr. Thomas Strat, DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA 96-14, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714, on or before 4:00 PM (EDT) 24 MAY 1996. ABSTRACTS AND PROPOSALS SENT BY FAX OR E-MAIL WILL BE DISREGARDED. Proposal abstracts received after this date will not be reviewed. Offerors will be notified of the evaluation results. Proposers must submit an original and eight (8) copies of full proposals to the administrative address for this BAA by 4:00 PM (EDT) 23 JULY 1996 in order to be considered. Proposers MUST obtain the BAA 96-14 Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) which provides further information on the areas of interest, evaluation, funding processes, preparation and formats of proposal abstracts and full proposals. This pamphlet may be obtained from the world wide web one working day after the CBD publication at URL address http://www.darpa.mil/baa/, or requests may be sent to the administrative electronic mail or fax addresses below. FORMAT: Proposals not meeting the specified format described in the PIP will not be reviewed. This Commerce Business Daily notice, in conjunction with the BAA 96-14 PIP, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available. EVALUATION AND AWARD: Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (1) overall scientific and technical merit, (2) offeror's capabilities and related experience, (3) potential contribution and relevance to DARPA mission, (4) plans and capability to accomplish technology transition, and (5) cost realism. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal which shall be considered by DARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) 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 image understanding research for exclusive competition among these entities. ADMINISTRATIVE: All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation, including requests for information on how to submit a proposal abstract or proposal to this BAA, must be directed to one of the administrative addresses below by 4:00 PM, 17 May 1996 for abstracts, and 11 July 1996 for proposals, e-mail or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail and fax for some correspondence regarding BAA 96-14. Technical and contractual questions should be directed to (baa96-14@darpa.mil) and may be answered directly or through the FAQ file. The administrative addresses for this BAA and file access information: The Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file are available at http://www.darpa.mil/baa/ (search ISO) or through electronic mail (instructions below). EMAIL AUTO-RESPONDER IS CAP SENSITIVE. Use lower case only. For auto-responder access to ALL available files on BAA 96-14, send an email message to (baa-info@darpa.mil) with NO SUBJECT. Within the body of message enter: info baa 96-14. You will receive a listing of all available files and instructions on how to access them via email auto-responder. Fax: 703-516-6065 addressed to IUBA, BAA 96-14. Mail: DARPA/ISO, ATTN: Thomas Strat, BAA 96-14, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. Read PIP for full instructions. (0108)

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