Project Announcement: Airfield Automation Initiative

The US Department of Defense is partnering with industry and academia on an initiative to develop and demonstrate a set of full autonomous airport operations (A2O) solutions on site at a commercial airfield and at a US Air Force Base (AFB). Specific focus will be on testing and developing a Command and Control (C&C) system for heterogenous vehicle mixes performing different mission profiles simultaneously as well as an autonomy package offering a set of autonomy software, compute, sensor, and mechanical integration to make legacy vehicles autonomous.

The solution will be self-sufficient and include all the computers, vehicles, sensors, networking, and payloads required. It will use an array of vehicles and payloads to solve key missions with a specific focus on foreign object debris (FOD) detection and collection. Key objectives include:

• Understanding and documentation of the specific needs, pain points and processes in place at the AFB.
• Demonstration of the solution in an active airfield operational environment, in stages of increasing complexity and scope.
• Technical improvements to the solution to address the specific needs of the AFB.
• Gathering of data and key learnings to guide the USAF and larger US government in their future deployments of autonomous solutions.

If you feel your organization has the technical capabilities and would like to be considered for this project, please complete the form below and upload your organization’s technical capabilities statement.

Interested Submissions Due by 8/29/2023.

We encourage participation of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs), including Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs) and Women’s Business Enterprises (WBEs).