Naomi Cooper
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected five companies to develop autonomous capabilities to enable military and commercial drones to carry out predefined operations without operator connection.
DARPA said Thursday the Rapid Experimental Missionized Autonomy program is an 18-month, single-phase program that aims to develop drone autonomy adapter and mission-specific autonomy software.
Anduril and RTX will develop the DA2 interface for use by group 1 to 3 stock commercial and military unmanned systems.
Leidos, Northrop Grumman and SoarTech will create MAS to upgrade drones from remotely piloted operation to autonomous mission execution using the DA2 interface.
REMA aims to develop autonomous capabilities through rapid spirals of development, the first of which began in December to create platforms with agnostic autonomy features.
The contractors are expected to demonstrate working autonomy systems in March.
