SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Botts Innovative Research, Inc (Botts, Inc.) proposes to conduct a feasibility study to assess the art of the possible as it relates to the use of the open source, open standards based OpenSensorHub (OSH) (www.OpenSensorHub.org) for the integration between the sensors and robots of Hyper Enabled Operators (HEO), their units, and their mission command, to provide battlespace awareness at the tactical, operational, and strategic level. Based on our existing experience in prototyping HEO scenarios with OSH in concert with SOFWERX, we believe that OSH has the chance to stimulate breakthrough advances in technology and innovation, with a solution based on re-usable, open source code and integrations, based on existing open standards, that are already being demonstrated in SOCOM Technical Experiments with already fielded SOF systems. Through the power of the Open Geospatial Consortium (www.opengeospatial.org) interoperability standards at the heart of OSH, Botts Inc expects to be able to prove the feasibility of a HEO architecture that can harness all manner of sensors, actuators, and process of all kinds (whether manifested as Sensor, Things, or Robots) as location-enabled, geographically-aware, web accessible services. This will allow SOF operators to better fuse all manner of heterogenous sensor data into a common 4D framework for processing, reasoning, and visualization in to a 4D tactical common operational picture (COP) for exercising mission command and executing operations at a tactical, operational and strategic level. As we demonstrate the feasibility of OSH to stream open standard “Tactical COP” data, we will highlight a HEO architecture where these technical augmentations can inform a wide range of applications on handheld devices, including ATAK and MAGE, and can easily be integrated in to any operational command systems will extend the reach of those devices as handheld sensors and for mission execution across the battle space. Building on Botts Inc’s work with SOFWERX on the integration of various sensors via OSH as part of the SOCOM HEO vision development, we believe we have a sound foundation for determining the feasibility of an OSH based architecture for realizing the larger HEO vision, across both Personal Area Networks (PAN), and as part of a HEO squad, over their Squad Area Networks (SqAN) via ATAK. This proposed effort would allow us to determine the feasibility of various architectural extensions to this SOFWERX/OSH baseline, and the integration of new and additional sensors, robots, and non-traditional ISR assets that are being considered as part of the HEO vision. Additionally, Botts Inc.’s participation in the Technical Experiments 20-2/20-3 (though postponed by COVID-19) has given us more experience integrating sensors from the SOF community, and simulating their function in an austere environment that simulates delayed/disconnected, intermittently-connected, low-bandwidth (DDIL) often experienced by SOF. Anticipated
