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

A -- AGENT BASED SYSTEMS (ABS) SOL SOL BAA 98-01 DUE 010798 POC Major Douglas Dyer, DARPA/ISO, fax (703) 696-2201 E-MAIL: Technical and contractual questions, baa98-01@darpa.mil. AGENT-BASED SYSTEMS (ABS) BAA98-01 DUE 010798 POC Major Douglas Dyer, (Technical) DARPA/ISO, FAX: (703) 696-2201, WEB: http://www.arpa.mil (search under solicitation), E-MAIL: baa98-01@darpa.mil. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office is soliciting proposals for multi-agent systems research and accompanying new technology development. Current military command and control software is manual, cumbersome, and exacting. During a crisis, military commanders and their staff waste precious hours manipulating information systems, manually specifying details, and performing simple tasks in order to assess the situation, form and execute plans, and protect the information infrastructure. Technology based on teams of intelligent agents acting autonomously to perform delegated tasks on behalf of the user offers the potential for easing, automating, and speeding many of these jobs. Intelligent agents must adapt to different problem solving situations and should be particularly powerful when they communicate and cooperate with other agents. Ensembles of cooperating agents will allow tailored sets of skills to be brought to tasks in a dynamic environment, but in order to be effective, methods for tasking, directing, and focusing agents must be developed. DARPA is interested in research and development which significantly advances the state of the art in multi-agent systems. DARPA seeks proposals which will advance technology development in the three broad areas of: (1) effective control strategies for allowing individual agents or sets of agents to effectively cooperate to solve problems, (2) algorithms, system designs, policies, and methods for limiting agent behaviors in order to avoid chaotic or resource-consumptive behaviors, and (3) computer system architectures and extensions to current architectures such as the Advanced Information Technology Services architecture being developed by DARPA/ISO and the DARPA/DISA Joint Program Office that support both multi-agent systems andlegacy software applications. Independent organizations and teams are encouraged to submit proposals in any or all areas. Each proposal submitted shall address a single area of research in one of the three broad categories. Within the meaning of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) at 6.102 and at 35.016, this announcement, in company with the Proposer Information Package (PIP) for this BAA, constitutes DARPA s solicitation for this R&D. BACKGROUND: DARPA/ISO anticipates that intelligent agents will play an important role in future command and control applications. Although intelligent agent technology is already appearing in commercial products, significant research and development remains to be accomplished before true benefits of agent-based systems can be realized. For example, agents or agent systems produced by different developers cannot cooperate in any meaningful way. Furthermore, there are presently no control strategies that prevent a large heterogeneous set of agents from exhibiting dangerous or chaotic behavior on a network. This lack of control can lead to clogged networks, wasted resources, poor performance, system shutdowns, and security vulnerabilities. Steps taken to increase cooperation in agent ensembles often conflict with those designed to keep agents from behaving badly. Evaluating tradeoffs inherent in different control strategies is an important R&D focus of this program. From an architectural perspective, interoperability standards are needed to implement agent ensembles and to interface agents with legacy applications. These standards include an agent reference model, agent-agent communications standards, agent-software communications (API) standards and benchmarking and evaluation standards. Agent system construction tools are required to support the development of individual agents and systems of agents using a variety of control strategies. An agent test environment is required to support the simulation, testing, and evaluation of large scale systems. Military demonstrations of advanced agent technology are required in such applications as network security, situation monitoring and estimation, command staff augmentation, and collaborative planning. ABS TECHNOLOGIES OF INTEREST: Technologies of interest are those that directly support effective agent ensembles including coordination and control strategies, semantic representation and translation methods, resource protection methods, security mechanisms, and system architectures. In addition, these related technologies will also be considered for funding: agent development languages, tools, and environments, communication protocols, testing and demonstration environments, evaluation methods, and component capabilities. Component capabilities are required for attaining intelligent, autonomous behavior from an agent or set of agents. Component capabilities include, but are not limited to, distributed artificial-intelligence-based techniques such as planning, scheduling, execution monitoring, knowledge-sharing, and acting. 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) quality and technical merit, (2) potential contribution to the solution of military problems, (3) offeror's capabilities and related experience, (4) approach to technology transfer, and (5) cost realism. GENERAL INFORMATION: SUBMISSION: An original and six (6) copies of the proposal must be submitted to Major Douglas Dyer, DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA 98-01, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. PROPOSALS SENT BY FAX OR E-MAIL WILL BE DISREGARDED. Proposers MUST obtain the BAA 98-01 Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) which provides further information on the areas of interest, evaluation, funding processes, preparation and formats of full proposals. This pamphlet may be obtained from the WORLD WIDE WEB one working day after release of the BAA in the CBD publication at URL http://www.arpa.mil (search undersolicitation), 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 98-01 PIP, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available. PROPOSALS: The Government anticipates that initial contractor selections will be made during the second quarter of fiscal year 1998; awards during third quarter. Proposals shall consist of two separately bound volumes. Volume I shall provide the technical proposal and management approach and Volume II shall address the cost. Detailed instructions for completing the proposals are contained in the PIP. Organizational Conflict of Interest: Each cost proposal shall contain a section satisfying the requirements of the following: Awards made under this BAA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations shall be furnished at the time of proposal submission, and the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the offeror has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. If the offeror believes that no such conflict exists, then it shall so state in this section. It is the policy of DARPA to treat all proposals as competitive information, and to disclose the contents only for the purposes of evaluation. The Government intends to use Litton/PRC personnel as special resources to assist with the logistics of administering proposal evaluation, and to provide advice on specific technical areas. Personnel of this contractor are restricted by their contracts from disclosing proposal information for any purpose other than these administrative or advisory tasks. Contractor personnel are required to sign the Organizational Conflict of Interest Non-Disclosure Agreements (OCI/NDA). By submission of its proposal, each offeror agrees that proposal information may be disclosed to those selected contractors for the limited purpose stated above. Any information not intended for limited release to this contractor must be clearly marked and segregated from other submitted proposal material. DARPA is seeking participation from the widest number of offerors. Toward this end, DARPA is willing to consider all types of proposals including, traditional FAR/DFARS type contracts, grants and "Other Transactions." Information concerning "Other Transactions" can be found at URL http://www.arpa.mil/cmo/pages/other_trans.html. OTHER GENERAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS. DARPA will construct a balanced program meeting its needs. Pending approval of funding, a total of approximately $3M may be available in FY98 for multiple efforts. Total funding available over 5 years is expected to be approximately $50M. Size of each award and duration of efforts will vary according to the type of effort undertaken. All responsible sources may submit a proposal that will be considered by the Agency. Historical 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 BAA98-01 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. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement. This BAA98-01 will be open for a period of one year after its publication in the CBD. An initial round of evaluationswill be conducted. In order to be considered in this initial round of evaluations, proposals must be received prior to 1600 EST, 07 January 1998. Communicating with DARPA: All administrative correspondence and questions concerning this BAA must be directed, in writing, to one of the administrative addresses below. Email or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail for most technical and administrative correspondence regarding this BAA. Technical and contractual questions should be directed to baa98-01@darpa.mil. Include the originator's full name and return Email address in the text. These questions will be answered directly by Email. Administrative Addresses: The PIP and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are available at URL http://www.arpa.mil (search under solicitation). Written requests for these documents may be sent by facsimile to 703-516-6065 addressed to ATTENTION ABS, or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA98-01 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. These requests must include the name and phone number of a point of contact. (0323)

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