SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Autonomous systems play an increasingly critical role across the DoD and Navy operations. To successfully execute such missions, a variety of functions must be managed and properly prioritized, including flight operations and navigation, self-protection, maritime picture gathering, and data transmission and communications. Artificial intelligence- (AI-) based approaches have high potential in autonomous missions because they can ingest high dimensional data much faster than humans, and perform rapid computations to dynamically replan. Properly embedding AI into autonomous systems can enable them to operate at machine-speed while making decisions in a complex environment that is based on dynamic, multi-domain data, and allow mission operations to be performed at super-human levels. However, there exists a range of unique AI-based approaches, each with its own benefits and limitations. Under this Phase I effort, we propose to design and demonstrate the feasibility of Combining Autonomous Mission Planning with AI GeNeral intelligence (CAMPAIGN). CAMPAIGN is a framework that combines a suite of AI-based components and novel data fusion capabilities on a neural program policy (NPP) backbone for explainable and autonomous mission execution. CAMPAIGN will enable dynamic generation of mission plans onboard autonomous systems and corresponding explainable AI technologies to enable trust with key stakeholders.
