Matthew Nelson
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has unveiled a funding opportunity for industry proposals to design and build an autonomous undersea robotic platform that would handle manmade objects on the ocean floor without human intervention or use of communications technology.
DARPA said in a FedBizOpps notice posted Friday it seeks approaches for the development of an undersea autonomous control system that will work to process mission commands and sensor data as well as examine the seabed environment through the Angler program.
The agency is interested in multiple robot capabilities such as object recognition, autonomous grasp planning and mission execution, long-duration transit and information fusing.
According to the agency, it wants potential participants to propose autonomy and decision support algorithms and methods to recognize and manipulate challenging objects. DARPA recommended that proposers apply existing software, hardware, physical interfaces and simulation infrastructure.
Interested parties can submit responses to through March 22.
