· web viewdefense advanced research projects agency (darpa) 17.2 small business innovation...

DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY (DARPA)17.2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)

Proposal Submission Instructions

Proposers responding to DARPA topics listed in this Announcement must follow all instructions provided in the DoD Program Announcement AND the supplementary DARPA instructions contained in this section.

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING THESE INSTRUCTIONS: These instructions only apply to proposals submitted in response to DARPA 17.2 Phase I topics.

IntroductionDARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise for the United States and to create technological surprise for its adversaries. The DARPA SBIR Program is designed to provide small, high-tech businesses and academic institutions the opportunity to propose radical, innovative, high-risk approaches to address existing and emerging national security threats; thereby supporting DARPA’s overall strategy to bridge the gap between fundamental discoveries and the provision of new military capabilities.

The responsibility for implementing DARPA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program rests with the Small Business Programs Office (SBPO).

DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCYAttention: DIRO/SBPO

675 North Randolph StreetArlington, VA 22203-2114

[email protected]://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/for-small-businesses

System RequirementsUse of the DARPA SBIR/STTR Information Portal (SSIP) is MANDATORY. Proposers will be required to authenticate into the SSIP (via the DARPA Extranet) to retrieve their selection decision notice, to request technical evaluation narratives, and to upload reports (awarded contracts only). DARPA SBPO will automatically create an extranet account for new users and send the SSIP URL, authentication credentials, and login instructions no later than 90 days AFTER the 17.2 DoD Program Announcement has closed. DARPA extranet accounts will ONLY be created for the individual named as the Corporate Official (CO) on the proposal coversheet. Proposers may not request accounts for additional users at this time.

WARNING: The Corporate Official (CO) e-mail address (from the proposal coversheet) will be used to create a DARPA Extranet account. Updates to Corporate Official e-mail after proposal submission may cause significant delays in communication retrieval and contract negotiation (if selected).

Notification of Proposal ReceiptWithin 7 business days after the DoD Program Announcement closing date, the individual named as the “Corporate Official” on the Proposal Cover Sheet will receive a separate e-mail from [email protected] acknowledging receipt for each proposal received. Please make note of the topic number and proposal number for your records.

DARPA - 1

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/for-small-businesses


Notification of Proposal StatusThe selection decision notice will be available no later than 90 days after the DoD Program Announcement close. The individual named as the “Corporate Official” on the Proposal Cover Sheet will receive an email for each proposal submitted from [email protected] with instructions for retrieving their official notification from the SSIP. Please read each notification carefully and note the proposal number and topic number referenced. The CO must retrieve the letter from the SSIP 30 days from the date the e-mail is sent.

After 30 days the CO must make a written request to [email protected] for the selection decision notice. The request must explain why the proposer was unable to retrieve the selection decision notice from the SSIP within the original 30-day notification period. Please also refer to the DoD Program Announcement.

Technical Evaluation NarrativeDARPA will provide a technical evaluation narrative to the proposer in accordance with the SBA Policy Directive, Appendix I, paragraph 4. The selection decision notice contains instructions for retrieving the technical evaluation narrative. Please also refer to the DoD Program Announcement.

Protest ProceduresRefer to the DoD Program Announcement for procedures to protest the Announcement.

Protests regarding the selection decision should be submitted to: DARPAContracts Management Office (CMO)675 N. Randolph StreetArlington, VA 22203E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]

Discretionary Technical Assistance (DTA)DARPA has implemented the Transition and Commercialization Support Program (TCSP) to provide commercialization assistance to SBIR and/or STTR awardees in Phase I and/or Phase II. Proposers awarded funding for use of an outside vendor for discretionary technical assistance (DTA) are excluded from participating in TCSP.

DTA requests must be explained in detail with the cost estimate and provide purpose and objective (clear identification of need for assistance), provider’s contact information (name of provider; point of contact; details on its unique skills/experience in providing this assistance), and cost of assistance (clearly identified dollars and hours proposed or other arrangement details). The cost cannot be subject to any profit or fee by the requesting firm. In addition, the DTA provider may not be the requesting firm itself, an affiliate or investor of the requesting firm, or a subcontractor or consultant of the requesting firm otherwise required as part of the paid portion of the research effort (e.g., research partner).

Proposers requesting DTA funding must complete the following:1. Indicate in question 17 of the proposal coversheet that you request DTA funding and input

proposed cost of DTA (in space provided). 2. Provide a one-page description of the vendor you will use and the technical assistance you will

receive. The description should be included as the last page of the Technical Volume. This description will not count against the 20-page limit of the technical volume and will NOT be evaluated.

3. Enter the total proposed DTA cost, which shall not exceed $5,000, under the “Discretionary Technical Assistance” line along with a detailed cost breakdown under “Explanatory material relating to the cost proposal” via the online cost proposal.

DARPA - 2




Approval of DTA is not guaranteed and is subject to review of the Contracting Officer. Refer to the DoD Program Announcement for additional information.

Phase I Duration and Cost GuidelinesRefer to the Phase I description in each topic for the duration and cost guidelines. Propose the appropriate duration and cost needed to accomplish the work.

Phase I OptionDARPA has implemented the use of a Phase I Option that may be exercised to fund interim Phase I activities while a Phase II contract is being negotiated. The Phase I Option covers activities over a period of up to four months and should describe appropriate initial Phase II activities that may lead to the successful demonstration of a product or technology. The statement of work for the Phase I Option counts toward the 20-page limit for the Technical Volume.

Commercialization StrategyDARPA is equally interested in dual use commercialization of SBIR project results to the U.S. military, the private sector market, or both, and expects explicit discussion of key activities to achieve this result in the commercialization strategy part of the proposal. Phase I is the time to plan for and begin transition and commercialization activities. The small business must convey an understanding of the preliminary transition path or paths to be established during the Phase I project.

The elements below are intended to REPLACE the instructions provided in the DoD Program Announcement.

The Phase I commercialization strategy shall not exceed 5 pages, and will NOT count against the 20-page proposal limit. It should be the last section of the technical volume and include the following elements:

1. Problem or Needs Statement. Briefly describe the problem, need, or requirement, and its significance relevant to a DoD application and/or a private sector application that the SBIR project results would address.

2. Potential Product(s), Application(s), and Customer(s). Identify potential products and applications, DoD end-users, Federal customers, and/or private sector customers who would likely use the technology. Provide specific information on the market need the technology will address and the size of the market.

3. Business Model and Funding. Include anticipated business model; potential private sector and federal partners the company has identified to support transition and commercialization activities; and the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) expected at the end of the Phase I. Also include a schedule showing the quantitative commercialization results from this SBIR project that your company expects to achieve.

4. Preliminary Phase II Strategy. Include key proposed milestones anticipated during Phase II such as: prototype development, laboratory and systems testing, integration, testing in operational environment, and demonstrations.

OPTIONAL: Advocacy Letters—Feedback received from potential Commercial and/or DoD customers and

other end-users regarding their interest in the technology to support their capability gaps. Letters of Intent/Commitment—Relationships established, feedback received, support and

commitment for the technology with one or more of the following: Commercial customer, DoD PM/PEO, a Defense Prime, or vendor/supplier to the Primes and/or other vendors/suppliers identified as having a potential role in the integration of the technology into fielded systems/products or those under development.

DARPA - 3

Advocacy Letters and Letters of Intent/Commitment are optional, do NOT count against any page limit, and should ONLY be submitted to substantiate any transition or commercialization claims made in the commercialization strategy. Please DO NOT submit these letters just for the sake of including them in your proposal. Letters that are faxed or e-mailed will NOT be accepted. Please note: In accordance with section 3-209 of DOD 5500.7-R, Joint Ethics Regulation, letters of endorsement from government personnel will NOT be accepted.

Organizational Conflicts of InterestIn accordance with FAR 9.5, proposers are required to identify and disclose all facts relevant to potential OCIs involving the proposer’s organization and any proposed team member (subawardee, consultant). Under this Section, the proposer is responsible for providing this disclosure with each proposal submitted to the BAA. The disclosure must include the proposer’s, and as applicable, proposed team member’s OCI mitigation plan. The OCI mitigation plan must include a description of the actions the proposer has taken, or intends to take, to prevent the existence of conflicting roles that might bias the proposer’s judgment and to prevent the proposer from having unfair competitive advantage. The OCI mitigation plan will specifically discuss the disclosed OCI in the context of each of the OCI limitations outlined in FAR 9.505-1 through FAR 9.505-4.

In addition, DARPA has a supplemental OCI policy that prohibits contractors/performers from concurrently providing Scientific Engineering Technical Assistance (SETA), Advisory and Assistance Services (A&AS) or similar support services and being a technical performer. Therefore, as part of the FAR 9.5 disclosure requirement above, a proposer must affirm whether the proposer or any proposed team member (subawardee, consultant) is providing SETA, A&AS, or similar support to any DARPA office(s) under: (a) a current award or subaward; or (b) a past award or subaward that ended within one calendar year prior to the proposal’s submission date.

If SETA, A&AS, or similar support is being or was provided to any DARPA office(s), the proposal must include:

The name of the DARPA office receiving the support; The prime contract number; Identification of proposed team member (subawardee, consultant) providing the support; and An OCI mitigation plan in accordance with FAR 9.5.

In accordance with FAR 9.503, 9.504 and 9.506, the Government will evaluate OCI mitigation plans to avoid, neutralize or mitigate potential OCI issues before award and to determine whether it is in the Government’s interest to grant a waiver. The Government will only evaluate OCI mitigation plans for proposals that are determined selectable under the BAA evaluation criteria and funding availability.

The Government may require proposers to provide additional information to assist the Government in evaluating the proposer’s OCI mitigation plan. If the Government determines that a proposer failed to fully disclose an OCI; or failed to provide the affirmation of DARPA support as described above; or failed to reasonably provide additional information requested by the Government to assist in evaluating the proposer’s OCI mitigation plan, the Government may reject the proposal and withdraw it from consideration for award.

Phase I Proposal ChecklistA complete proposal must contain the following four volumes:

1. Volume 1: Cover Sheet. Enter complete and accurate information. Propose separate costs for the base and option periods.

2. Volume 2: Technical Volume.

DARPA - 4

Ensure this volume begins on page 1 and all pages of the proposal are numbered consecutively.

Ensure this volume does not exceed 20 pages (not including the commercialization strategy or DTA). Pages in excess of the 20-page limit will not receive consideration during evaluation.

Include documentation required for DTA (if proposed). 3. Volume 3: Cost Volume.

Use the online cost proposal. Propose separate costs for the base and option periods, and ensure the amounts entered in

the Cost Volume match the amounts entered on the Coversheet. Explain in detail subcontractor, material and travel costs. Use the "Explanatory Material

Field" in the DoD Cost Volume worksheet for this information. Ensure proposed DTA does not exceed authorized amount, and provide required

documentation. 4. Volume 4: Company Commercialization Report.

Follow requirements specified in the DoD Program Announcement.5. Submission:

Upload four completed volumes electronically through the DoD submission site before the closing date specified in the DoD Program Announcement.

Review submission after upload to ensure that all pages have transferred correctly and do not contain unreadable characters. Contact the DoD Help Desk immediately with any problems.

Submit proposal before 8:00 P.M. on the closing date specified in the DoD Program Announcement.

Phase I Evaluation CriteriaPhase I proposals will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria in the DoD ProgramAnnouncement.

The proposer's attention is directed to the fact that non-Government advisors to the Government may review and provide support in proposal evaluations during source selection. Non-government advisors may have access to the proposer's proposals, may be utilized to review proposals, and may provide comments and recommendations to the Government's decision makers. These advisors will not establish final assessments of risk and will not rate or rank proposer's proposals. They are also expressly prohibited from competing for DARPA SBIR or STTR awards in the SBIR/STTR topics they review and/or provide comments on to the Government. All advisors are required to comply with procurement integrity laws and are required to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements and Rules of Conduct/Conflict of Interest statements. Non-Government technical consultants/experts will not have access to proposals that are labeled by their proposers as "Government Only".

Phase II ProposalAll proposers awarded a Phase I contract under this announcement will receive a notification letter with instructions for preparing a Phase II Proposal and a deadline for submission. Visit http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/for-small-businesses/participate-sbir-sttr-program for more information regarding the Phase II proposal process.

DARPA - 5

DARPA SBIR 17.2 Topic Index

SB172-001 Compact and Scalable Bidirectional Electronic BioInterfacesSB172-002 Improved Mass Production of Beneficial InsectsSB172-003 Development of Gene-Encoded Monoclonal Antibody Potency AssaySB172-004 Super-Resolving Phase Filter for Improved 3D Printing, Machining and ImagingSB172-005 Plug and Play Analysis and SimulationSB172-006 Collective Allostatic LoadSB172-007 Analyzing Human Dimensions of Software Engineering ProcessesSB172-008 Ecosystem of Secure Software Components around the seL4 MicrokernelSB172-009 Accelerated Low-power Motion Planning for Real-time Interactive AutonomySB172-010 Electronically Switchable Optical Filter

DARPA - 6

DARPA SBIR 17.2 Topic Descriptions

SB172-001 TITLE: Compact and Scalable Bidirectional Electronic BioInterfaces

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Biomedical, Electronics

OBJECTIVE: Design and fabricate electronic bidirectional "headstage" system(s) for performing large-scale neurophysiology studies involving multichannel neural recording and microstimulation in awake and freely behaving animals.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to develop a system(s) or platform solution to address the capability gap in the neural interface community, with broad applicability to neuroscience and neuroengineering. Some of the main limitations with current electronics for neurophysiological studies are the size and cost of traditional equipment for neurophysiology studies. Large digital signal processing boxes [1] have enabled large-scale recordings of neural activity in the brain and recent efforts to miniaturize these electronics have yielded successful research products [2]. While clinically available [3] systems have been developed, the number of channels in these systems is comparatively low. There has been significant academic research addressing portions of this need [4-8], but none of this research has provided a complete system ready for commercial distribution.

Next-generation neural systems will require bidirectional, real-time communication of high-bandwidth neural signals into and out of the body. Current neural interfaces tend to focus on input (stimulation only) or output (recording only) from the physiological system. As the field of bioelectronic medicine matures, the need to have bidirectional systems that provide closed-loop stimulation (diagnose, analyze, then stimulate accordingly) will require electronics that are capable of recording and stimulating simultaneously.

Proposals must develop a compact and flexible bidirectional system that addresses all components of C-SWaP (cost, size, weight, and power). The goal is to move processing power from traditional large, bench-top processing boxes to smaller electronics on (or close to) the site of recording on the animal (i.e., a headstage), including multiplexing functionality that reduces lead-count in the wire bundle connecting head-stage to benchtop instrumentation. The headstage electronics must be compact and lightweight, providing a high throughput data "pipe" to enable high channel count recording and stimulation (minimum of 32 channels per headstage). The system architecture should be flexible and scalable to further increase the channel count and support multiple types of biological data (brain, peripheral nerve, muscle, etc.). The goal is to shift processing power and technology closer to the biological specimen, improve the quality of signal, and lower the overall cost and bulk of the equipment to perform large-scale neurophysiological experiments. Solutions may require real-time analysis capabilities and firmware upgradability to add new capabilities.

The device should be intended for pre-clinical research in animals. In addition to C-SWaP, efforts need to account for reliability and manufacturability. Systems and architectures need to account for methods to reliably attach to various electrode(s) and, if the system is to be wired, an external connector. The design should account for relevant environmental stressors to enable robust operation in freely behaving animal experiments. In order to demonstrate a viable prototype by the end of this SBIR, all aspects of system development enabling a functional prototype must be addressed: application programming interfaces for stimulation and recording, data transfer and power, power usage, size, weight, cost to fabricate, encapsulation, thermal budget under operating conditions, design for operation in a realistic environment (e.g., EMI, simulated mechanical behavior, etc.). The design of electronics may require safety features, bioelectric amplification, DAC/ADC, signal processing, operational reconfigurability, true stimulation charge balancing, stimulation artifact immunity/rejection, noise levels (<0.5 uVRMS), onboard memory storage (pseudo wireless), and/or other features that would enable the design to be highly scalable to support high channel count devices. Additional features may include data compression or analysis functions implemented on the headstage.

PHASE I: Develop preliminary design concept and architecture to determine technological feasibility of a low-power, scalable, flexible bidirectional system for pre-clinical animal use. The component must support capabilities

DARPA - 7

for simultaneous stimulation and recording on each headstage, with flexible and rapid reconfigurability. Neural recording instrumentation must be suitable for measuring various types of bioelectrical signals, including compound and single unit action potentials in peripheral nerve, muscle, and field potentials and action potentials (multi and single unit) in the central nervous system. Stimulation control should offer the resolution and range needed for neural stimulation in these various structures.

The proposed electronics must be scalable to enable high channel count (1000+ channels) recording, with a minimum of 32 channels per headstage. Systems need to be lightweight and compact to enable placement very near or on the animal. While the system or platform needs to record from a subset of nerves, brain, spinal cord, and muscle, the specific architecture should enable successful recordings from all structures. Architectures could include an all-in-one solution, a modular design, or other possibilities. A particular electrode technology or connector/link to external equipment is not mandated, but the system design should include specific choices and support for particular electrode(s) and wired connector(s) or link(s). Plans need to include specific methods to connect electrodes and, if applicable, a connector to an external system. Technology feasibility needs to include anticipated specifications (e.g., noise floor, power, heat, size, cost, resolution/step size, etc.) and needs to address the inherent issues of electrical recording neural/muscle waveforms simultaneously with electrical stimulation of neural structures. System noise and power consumption parameters must be defined and quantitatively estimated. In addition, detailed system properties and assumptions need to be defined/supported including, but not limited to: self-test capability to ensure system, electrode, and insulation integrity; tissue heating; and power usage. Error detection and correction capabilities should be assessed where relevant. Efforts should prepare plans for testing in vivo to verify full functionality for bioelectrical recording and stimulation.

The Phase I deliverable is a final report that must include : a) modeling and simulations of expected performance; b) modeling and simulations of the effect of relevant biological components on package and electrode interfaces; c) target animal species; d) competitive assessment; and, e) system performance metrics, plans, and a timeline for the systems to be designed and constructed in Phase II. Optimizing usability with multiple neural interfaces or connectors will be considered an additional attractive feature. Plans for Phase II should include preliminary design goals and key technological milestones to enable pre-clinical testing and evaluation. Phase I should account for time to submit and process all required animal use protocols as appropriate.

For this topic, DARPA will accept proposals for work and cost up to $225,000 for Phase I. The preferred structure is a $175,000 base period, up to 12 months period of performance, and a $50,000, 4-month option period. Alternative structures may be accepted if sufficient rationale is provided.

PHASE II: Develop and demonstrate a prototype system based on the preliminary design from Phase I. All appropriate engineering and testing will be performed. A critical design review will be performed to finalize the design. Particular emphasis will be placed upon prototype size, weight, power, cost, functionality, scalability, flexibility, and the ability to reliably record neural/muscle data simultaneously with neural stimulation. Phase II deliverables will include: (1) a working prototype of the system, including expected life-cycle capabilities; (2) test data on its performance collected in one or more pre-clinical models; (3) test data to ensure compliance with relevant regulations from FDA, FCC, IEC, or other organizations for use in animals, or potentially humans; and (4) projections for manufacturing yield and costs. Phase II should account for time to submit and process all required animal and/or human subjects use protocols as appropriate.

For this topic, DARPA will accept Phase II proposals for work and cost up to $3,000,000 for a period of up to 36 months. This amount and duration will be inclusive of an Option period. Proposers will be expected to propose the appropriate duration and cost needed to accomplish the work. Phase II awards and options are subject to the availability of funds.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: An end goal of this effort is to provide a new commercial platform/device(s) to conduct basic research or pre-clinical neural engineering, biomechanical, neuroscience, or neuromodulation research. The platform will enable a multitude of pre-clinical studies from the resulting device(s). Another end goal for this platform may be in clinical applications. The device(s) may also lead to clinical devices for neural engineering, biomechanical, neuroscience, or neuromodulation studies that may be associated with advanced prostheses for civilians/wounded-warriors with upper limb amputations, spinal cord injuries, brain-stem

DARPA - 8

stroke, and other clinically relevant applications.

REFERENCES:1. TDT 512 Channel Neurophysiology System: http://www.tdt.com/512-channel-neurophysiology-system.html

2. Ripple Grapevine Neural Interface Processor: http://rippleneuro.com/products/grapevine-neural-interfaceprocessor/

3. Rouse, A.G., Stanslaski, S.R., Cong, P., Jensen, R.M., Afshar, P., Ullestad, D., Gupta, R., Molnar, G.F., Moran, D.W. and Denison, T.J., 2011. A chronic generalized bi-directional brain machine interface. Journal of neural engineering, 8(3), p.036018.

4. Nguyen, A.T., Xu, J. and Yang, Z., 2015, September. A 14-bit 0.17 mm 2 SAR ADC in 0.13µm CMOS for high precision nerve recording. In Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), 2015 IEEE (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

5. Shulyzki, R., Abdelhalim, K., Bagheri, A., Salam, M.T., Florez, C.M., Velazquez, J.L.P., Carlen, P.L. and Genov, R., 2015. 320-channel active probe for high-resolution neuromonitoring and responsive neurostimulation. IEEE transactions on biomedical circuits and systems, 9(1), pp.34-49.

6. Wheeler, J.J., Baldwin, K., Kindle, A., Guyon, D., Nugent, B., Segura, C., Rodriguez, J., Czarnecki, A., Dispirito, H.J., Lachapelle, J. and Parks, P.D., 2015, August. An implantable 64-channel neural interface with reconfigurable recording and stimulation. In 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) (pp.7837-7840). IEEE.

7. Carboni, C., Bisoni, L., Carta, N., Puddu, R., Raspopovic, S., Navarro, X., Raffo, L. and Barbaro, M., 2016. An integrated interface for peripheral neural system recording and stimulation: system design, electrical tests and in-vivo results. Biomedical microdevices, 18(2), pp.1-17.

KEYWORDS: Advanced electronics, stimulation rejection, scalable electronics, headstage, computer aided engineering, design for manufacture, design for test, fabrication, integrated product and process design, ASIC

SB172-002 TITLE: Improved Mass Production of Beneficial Insects

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Biomedical, Chemical/Biological Defense

OBJECTIVE: Develop innovative engineering (e.g., automation or bio-sensing technologies), genetic, and/or genomic approaches to reduce the negative characteristics associated with insect colony production to be used for a variety of purposes in agricultural production or agricultural research (e.g., edible insects, natural enemies for biological control of agricultural pests, pathogens, or weeds, etc.). Projects focusing on mosquito production are discouraged from applying.

DESCRIPTION: There is a DoD need to improve production systems to produce insects for food or feed, agricultural release, or entomological research in an effort to mitigate threats to agriculture stability and develop alternative methods of producing nutrients or other bio-synthesized products. Insects currently provide crucial “ecosystem services” including natural pest suppression and pollination that are under increasing strain from environmental and anthropogenic disturbance. In contrast, advances in synthetic biology provide future opportunities to bolster these roles, or create entirely new insect-delivered services altogether. Achievement of these goals will require large numbers of specific insect species to be produced at a scale that is currently difficult because of system bottlenecks. If these bottlenecks could be overcome, managed insect production could play a large and important role in ensuring national security through stabilization of food security or the provisioning of other essential services delivered by insects.

DARPA - 9

Insects are the dominant animal group on the planet, and many species are accordingly vital to the provisioning of natural capital in support of the human economy. These so-called “ecosystem services” may be calculated as the value of the services lost if insects were to disappear. Using this method, Losey and Vaugh (2006) valued wild insect ecosystem services in the United States, including pollination, pest suppression, nutrient cycling, and recreational opportunities, at no less than $57 billion USD per year. Debates continue as to the accuracy and ethics of assigning values to natural services, but few can argue that a world without insects would struggle and perhaps fail to support human economies as we know them today.

The opportunity to positively affect large-scale managed insect production requires technological advances to overcome the bottlenecks created by the feeding media or substrate, labor, post-processing, quality control, and insufficient capital to generate efficiencies of scale (Cohen et al. 1999, Grenier 2009). Many insect species, especially those used for pest control, have relatively inflexible dietary demands in terms of nutritional quality, and some natural enemy species require only certain animal species as hosts. Insect bodies are fragile, and have generally been handled by humans during husbandry and packaging, a time-consuming and often expensive endeavor. Artificial rearing sometimes produces poor quality results; for example, it can yield insects with low nutritional value or that are unable to function in the environment upon release. Too often, existing solutions are expensive, thus triggering a vicious cycle where the insect product is not economical enough to attract the very capital expansion investment that would reduce the cost-per-unit to sustainable levels.

Accordingly, innovative solutions to these problems of rearing valuable insect species en masse would prove immensely valuable. Opportunities abound to improve rearing success on artificial diets, increase automation of husbandry and processing, improve quality control, and reduce cost-to-entry barriers of novel or existing technologies that overcome the most common insect rearing hurdles. Improved genetic, genomic, and proteomic understanding and editing tools allows enhanced diet optimization on both the production (nutritional) and consumption (insect) ends of the pipeline. Vast improvements in sensors, robotics, and computing have already allowed a nascent, automated plant-farming industry to form, and similar technologies could be developed or transferred to insect rearing and processing methods. Plummeting costs in an array of molecular techniques and specialized production platforms encourage a re-evaluation of formerly cost-prohibitive processes or a re-imagination of new ones.

Removing or reducing barriers to the efficient, economical, and effective production of valuable insect species could be used to improve agricultural production, deliver novel sources of nutrition, and protect necessary ecosystem services. Innovative engineering, bio-synthetic, and/or genetic/genomic strategies will be required to improve the output, quality, and viability of large-scale insect rearing needed to meet these goals.

This SBIR topic seeks approaches to identify and address issues associated with large-scale insect rearing and/or the improvement of production outcomes. We encourage applications that use emerging engineering and genetic/genomic tools to these ends. Expected outcomes could be: rapid assessment and/or production of successful artificial diets; improved rearing efficiency and/or scale through the use of automation, strategies, or machines to rapidly assess insect quality or delicately handle live insects for post-processing; and materials or methods to speed return on investment during the scaling-up process.

PHASE I: Identify engineering objectives, molecular targets, or innovative strategies for improving production and performance of insects to improve large-scale rearing operations. Individual projects should address at least one of several challenges expected, which include: (1) artificial insect diet success, (2) increased efficiency and automation, (3) improved quality control and post-processing, (4) materials or methods to significantly improve rates of return on creating economies of scale. Example approaches could include the following:

• Artificial diets for difficult-to-produce or especially valuable beneficial insect species.• Engineering advances in insect rearing facilities to increase energy, materials, and/or labor efficiency.• Methods, sensors, or machines to improve insect quality and reduce post-processing time or losses.• Novel, alternative, or streamlined solutions to especially costly insect rearing facility problems.

The key deliverable for Phase I will be the demonstration of a proof of concept that the selected challenge has been

DARPA - 10

overcome and can be scaled to a larger format. These demonstrations should be performed in repeated experiments in small colonies (i.e., tens to hundreds of individuals) on single or multiple insect species where significant improvements in insect rearing success, efficiency, end product, or cost-per-unit can be shown to have significantly improved through relevant analysis.

For this topic, DARPA will accept proposals for work and cost up to $225,000 for Phase I. The preferred structure is a $175,000, 12-month base period, and a $50,000, 4-month option period. Alternative structures may be accepted if sufficient rationale is provided.

PHASE II: The small-scale, small-colony approach taken in Phase I will be transferred to and implemented in a large-scale (i.e., hundreds to thousands of individuals) insect-products-sourcing platform. The goal of Phase II is the integration of technologies used to increase the output of insect rearing facilities through the success of artificial diets, automation, quality control and post-processing, or reduced cost per unit. Therefore, the deliverable for Phase II is the demonstration of a large-scale insect production system utilizing integrated engineering, genetic, or materials technologies. Communication with the proper regulatory agencies will be a key component to determine how these technologies can be safely and ethically monitored for proper use and eventual commercialization of the anticipated product.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Phase III (Commercial): The technologies developed in Phases I and II will be integrated into a fundamental platform to improve the production of economically or environmentally valuable insect species. These integrated technologies will serve as the foundation for further improvement. Phase III will be a demonstration of a fully adopted system that utilizes two or more technologies to improve production. In addition to the development of a plan for regulatory oversight, if applicable, Phase III projects should address the challenge of encouraging human acceptance of insects and insect-derived products for human use.

Phase III (Military): The integration of insect-derived products or ecosystem services (e.g., into the Combat Feeding Directorate or the Armed Forces Pest Management Board) is a potential option for technology transition. The objective of Phase III (Military) will be to determine feasibility, utility, and acceptance levels of these products and production systems by military personnel, especially in deployment scenarios.

REFERENCES:1. Chambers, Darrell L. 1977. Quality Control in Mass Rearing. Annual Review of Entomology 22:289-308

2. Clarke, Geoffrey M., Leslie J. McKenzie. 1992. Fluctuating Asymmetry as a Quality Control Indicator for Insect Mass Rearing Processes. Economic Entomology 85(6):2045-2050.

3. Cohen, Allen C., Donald A. Nordlund, and Rebecca A. Smith. 1999. Mass Rearing of entomophagous insects and predaceous mites: are bottlenecks biological, engineering, economic, or cultural? Biocontrol 20(3):85N-90N.

4. Grenier, Simon. 2009. In vitro rearing of entomophagous insects – Past and future trends: a mini review. Bulletin of Insectology 62(1):1-6.

5. Losey, John E., Mace Vaughn. 2006. The Economic Value of Ecological Services Provided by Insects. BioScience 56(4):311-323.

6. Riddick, Eric W. 2009. Benefits and limitations of factitious prey and artificial diets on life parameters of predatory beetles, bugs, and lacewings: a mini-review. Biocontrol 54:325-339.

KEYWORDS: insect production, automation, molecular biology, beneficial insects, ecosystem services

SB172-003 TITLE: Development of Gene-Encoded Monoclonal Antibody Potency Assay

DARPA - 11

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Biomedical, Chemical/Biological Defense

OBJECTIVE: Develop generalizable gene-encoded monoclonal antibody (mAb) potency assays for assessing formulated nucleic acid constructs that encode prophylactic monoclonal antibodies. Demonstrate and validate the technology for at least three distinct indications.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to respond effectively to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases by recognizing and responding to new outbreaks early and rapidly [1]. The advent of nucleic acid-based countermeasure technologies has been critical to addressing this need, enabling rapid synthesis, reduced cold chain needs, and decreased costs [2,3]. A significant hurdle remaining in this process are requirements that ensure clinical batch-to-batch comparability. Potency tests for nucleic acid drug products are integral to clinical development to ensure similar, expected behavior of the product when derived from various batches, manufacturers, etc. Those working in this space currently are using ad hoc systems to evaluate product potency, or even worse, not evaluating batch-to-batch potency at all.

DARPA seeks to promote the design of a gene-encoded mAb potency assay that requires only minimal (if any) modifications across mAb and/or indication space. For DNA vaccines currently in the clinic, the potency test consists of transfecting cells with the DNA plasmid and using flow cytometry to determine if the transfected cells express the encoded antigen, which then triggers multiple signaling cascades to generate a protective state. For DNA- (or RNA-) encoded monoclonal antibodies, the encoded protein itself confers a protective state, and thus a potency assay based on expression alone is insufficient—the assay(s) should not only demonstrate gene expression by transfected cells but also effectively predict concentration range in the intended recipient (e.g., 40-pound child vs. 130-pound adult) and confirm that the encoded mAb(s) protein maintains desired binding and function.

PHASE I: Develop key requirements and establish performance metrics for evaluation of the potency assay. Define the components and methods to be used. Investigate and define risks and risk mitigation strategies. Implement a basic prototype system or a simulated system that demonstrates operating principles and fundamental performance capabilities. Establish use cases. Required Phase I deliverables will include a final report detailing the design of the assay, requirements, fabrication process (if needed), and any preliminary performance results.

For this topic, DARPA will accept proposals for work and cost up to $225,000 for Phase I. The preferred structure is a $175,000, 8-month base period and a $50,000, 4-month option period. Alternative structures may be accepted if sufficient rationale is provided.

PHASE II: Finalize the design of Phase I and complete implementation. Evaluate the performance of the assay against pre-established requirements. Demonstrate and validate the technology for least three distinct use cases spanning i. target tissue(s) (e.g., respiratory, systemic, skin, etc.); ii. mAb physiology (e.g., IgG subtype, ScFv-Fc, etc.), and iii. formulations (e.g., with protamine, lipid, polymer, combination, etc.). Through appropriate statistical analysis, demonstrate the ability of the potency assay to determine similarity (or lack thereof) of a gene-encoded mAb derived from different batches or synthesis protocols. Phase II deliverables will include final potency assay design and working prototype, and a final report detailing system performance for the selected indications.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The end goal of this effort is to provide the community with a gene-encoded mAb potency assay to enable facile comparison between batches, and ultimately, faster entry into the clinic and mass production of countermeasures against infectious diseases and emerging pandemics to provide immediate protection to susceptible civilian and deployed military populations. The new platform technologies developed under this SBIR are expected to predict stability of the gene-encoded mAb construct and whether it will yield clinically relevant mAb concentrations after delivery to human, which will enable a more rapid, de-risked path to the clinic and regulatory approval, ultimately resulting in increased medical countermeasure IND submissions by commercial/industry and DOD entities.

REFERENCES:

DARPA - 12

1. DARPA P3 Program. http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017-02-06a

2. Flingai, S et al. Protection against dengue disease by synthetic nucleic acid antibody prophylaxis/immunotherapy. Sci Rep. 2015 Jul 29.

3. Muralidhara, B et al. Critical considerations for developing nucleic acid macromolecule based drug products. Drug Discov Today. 2016 Mar.

KEYWORDS: potency assay, formulated nucleic acid, infectious disease, monoclonal antibody, gene-encoded, DNA, RNA

SB172-004 TITLE: Super-Resolving Phase Filter for Improved 3D Printing, Machining and Imaging

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Materials/Processes

OBJECTIVE: Design and fabricate an optical phase filter capable of modifying an incident wave into a “super-resolved spot”, i.e. into a beam that is more tightly focused than a diffraction-limited focal spot. The optical phase filter design should permit its use at Ultra-Violet (UV), visible, and Infrared (IR) wavelengths. The objective is to provide at least an order of 10 improvement in current spot sizes for 3D printing, laser cutting and welding and an improved point spread function for imaging while maintaining high transmission efficiency for all applications.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to significantly improve manufacturing processing through higher precision 3D printing, greater accuracy, and in the case of imaging, improved resolution, e.g. in a scanning system. Optical phase filters have been designed using a variety of approaches in order to efficiently modify an incident wavefront into a spot which is tightly focused transverse to the direction of propagation. For over sixty years, attempts have been made to realize these superresolving filters, usually assuming they are thin with respect to the wavelength of operation resulting in low diffraction efficiency. Spot sizes, smaller than conventional resolution limits suggest, have been obtained but these were often at the expense of increased stray light, reduced field of view or reflections.

The limits to resolution from a scattering of diffracting element have been debated over the years by Shannon, Gabor and Di Francia [1] often in terms of analytic properties of the wavefield and the number of degrees of freedom of the imaging system. The classical analysis of this problem and the inherent ill-posedness of superresolution can be found in [2] by Slepian and Pollack and one of the first papers proposing a superresolving filter was by W. Lukosz [3]. Manipulating zero crossings of a field to fashion desirable point spread functions is reasonably straightforward and the relationship between the resulting point spread function and the transmittance of the diffracting mask is well known [4]. In lithography, so-called phase-shift filters have been employed for 30 years to provide some measure of improvement in resolution [5]. Constructive - destructive interference effects can reduce the effective width of a point spread function, but the improvement is limited. A detailed study of superresolving filters was published by Morris et al [6], considering both the transverse width of the point spread function (the G parameter which is the ratio of the first zero of the superresolved point spread function, divided by the first zero of the Airy disk) and its relative intensity (the Strehl ratio: the intensity of the superresolved peak/the intensity of the Airy disk) [7].

One example approach for superresolving filter design is as follows [8]. By manipulating the zero distribution of an optical phase filter’s diffracted field, tightly focused spots are accompanied by intense sidelobes and correspondingly low intensity in the spot. A useful property of propagating and diffracted wavefields is that one can represent them by analytic functions of a complex variable. A point spread function is an analytic (entire) function of specific order and type determined by the spatial bandwidth. In the one-dimensional case, this allows a representation for the field similar to that of a polynomial, i.e. as a (Hadamard) product encoding zero locations. Asymptotically, the complex roots are equally spaced and tend to lie parallel to or on the real axis. The nature of this class of analytic functions is that one can retain the square integrable properties of such a function if one only

DARPA - 13

perturbs the non-asymptotic zero locations. Thus, by manipulating these zero locations in 1D, 2D and 3D, the point spread function can be shaped to be arbitrarily narrow to form super-oscillatory wavefronts, [9-10]. Unfortunately, this analysis to date has been based upon a physical optics or weakly scattering model. A strongly scattering model is necessary and some kind of 3D or 2.5D metasurface [11] is likely needed to improve efficiency. An inverse problem has to be solved to determine the index distribution of the phase filter or metasurface in order to realize an improved design.

By carefully manipulating the interference pattern generated by scattered and diffracted waves transmitted through an optical phase filter which is not necessarily thin, can one generate a spatially superresolved spot that is both light-efficient and manufacturable? What additional degrees of freedom can be usefully exploited to this end, if one includes multiple scattering in the filter and makes use of coherence and polarization properties [12-13] of the incident wave? An innovative approach to this challenging problem is sought.

PHASE I: Design and numerically simulate the properties of an optical filter that can generate superresolved (e.g. less than tenth of a wavelength) optical spot with high throughput efficiency. The efficiency of the proposed optical phase filter must be specified along with the fundamental limits to the smallest spot size one might achieve. Also, the power handling capability of a practical filter needs to be estimated, as well as its wider angle beam properties (stray light) and field of view.

The optical phase filter is anticipated to be a surface relief pattern with high transmission efficiency and ideally be free-standing. The filter should encode the spot at a known distance behind the filter and the sidelobes and depth of focus of the subwavelength spot determined. Polarization, bandwidth and coherence characteristics should be determined also.

Phase I deliverable(s) will be a final report that includes the design principles used, the proposed designs for the optical phase filter and numerical simulations or theoretical models that predict the filter’s practical performance specifications.

For this topic, DARPA will accept proposals for work and cost up to $150,000 for Phase I. The preferred structure is a $100,000, 6-month base period, and a $50,000, 4-month option period.

PHASE II: Using results from Phase I fabricate and validate a prototype. The optical filter can be designed and fabricated to operate at any or several of the specified wavelength ranges. In Phase II, filters will be fabricated and can be characterized in a 3D printing, cutting, or scribing application. The filter’s use for imaging should also be evaluated. The material choice and fabrication approach is not specified but manufacturability of a large number of these optical phase filters has to be eventually feasible at reasonable cost.

Phase II deliverable(s) will include examples of optical filters and their performance specifications in one or more of the applications given above.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Multiple commercial and military products could benefit from this technology since an optical filter design could be optimized and then scaled for use at different wavelengths. Ideally, a stand-alone mask can be inserted into existing optical systems such as optical printing or machining systems. This filter may be retrofitted to 3D printers that write with lasers (e.g. Optek, 3D Systems tools, Nanoscribe) in both a military and commercial context for greater precision when producing parts or prototypes, e.g. in the battlefield or in space. Advancing this technology has potential applications for:

i) Cutting and writing into materials which absorb optical wavelengths; medical and industrial applications come to mind (e.g. chip trimming, ablation or erasure of material with high precision)ii) Optical imaging with the superresolved spot as a probeiii) Reading and writing with optical storage mediaiv) As a means to produce a highly focused and higher power laser spot by direct use of the filter in a laser cavity (e.g. external cavity laser or direct fabrication onto the end of a fiber laser).v) Possible use as a sensor if small wavelength changes or wavefront perturbations modify the spatial distribution of light

DARPA - 14

vi) Optical scalpel for laser surgery, cutting and sealing tissue, tattoo removal, cosmetic applications, internal/orthoscopic applications, repair of micro- and nano-structures by laser trimming etc.

REFERENCES:1. G. Toraldo di Francia, 45, 497-501, 1955.

2. D. Slepian and H.O. Pollak, Bell Syst. Tech. J., 40, 43-63, 1961.

3. W. Lukosz, J. Opt. Soc. Amer., 52, 827-829, 1962

4. M. A. Fiddy et al, Opt Acta 29, 23-40, 1982.

5. M. D. Levenson, Physics Today, 28-36, July 1993

6. T.R.M. Sales and G.M. Morris, J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A., 1637-1646,1997.

7. T. R. M. Sales and G. M. Morris, Optics Letters 22, 582-584, 1997

8. M.A. Fiddy and H. K. Allamsetty, "Vortex interference for superresolved beam waists", SPIE 5562, pp19-26, 2004.

9. J. Diao, et al. Controllable design of super-oscillatory planar lenses for sub-diffraction-limit optical needles, Optics Express Vol. 24, No. 3, 1924, 2016

10. E. T. Rogers, et al. “Super-oscillatory optical needle,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 102(3), 031108, 2013.

11. P. Genevet, et al., “Recent advances in planar optics: from plasmonic to dielectric metasurfaces”, Optica, Vol. 4, p139-152, 2017.

12. F. Qin, et al. “Shaping a subwavelength needle with ultra-long focal length by focusing azimuthally polarized light,” Sci. Rep. 5, 9977 2015.

13. V. V. Kotlyar, et al. “Analysis of the shape of a subwavelength focal spot for the linearly polarized light,” Appl. Opt. 52(3), 330–339, 2013.

KEYWORDS: Super-resolving phase filter, high resolution 3D printing, precision laser machining, high resolution imaging, rapid prototyping

SB172-005 TITLE: Plug and Play Analysis and Simulation

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Information Systems

OBJECTIVE: Develop and test one or more techniques for plug and play interoperability of computer-aided engineering (CAE) and computer-aided design (CAD) that would allow automated use of new and legacy simulation tools with CAD models obtained from a variety of sources.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to develop and prove out techniques and methodologies that would allow use of new and legacy engineering simulation tools on complex geometric models with minimal or no human intervention and preprocessing. Mechanical CAD data preparation continues to dominate most CAE activities, hindering use of advanced engineering simulation tools, and resulting in excessive costs across a broad range of

DARPA - 15

design and manufacturing activities. Most commercial and legacy tools require gridding or meshing – semi-automated heuristic procedures that rely on human experts and manual processing. Recent R&D efforts have been focused on meshfree and meshless methods, but the adoption of these tools has been slow and limited, partly due to their difficulty interoperating with realistic CAD data, and partly because they are not mature enough to replace the legacy CAE tools researched and developed over many decades. As a result, significant resources spent on improving and perfecting CAE tools appear to be reinventing and improving the “representation and simulation wheel” (or “a better mousetrap”), without being able to harvest their full potential and power.

The types of analysis and simulation tools sought for this topic includes but is not limited to mechanics, aerodynamics, thermal, electromagnetics, fracture, aero-elastic, noise, vibration, transport phenomena. In particular, the proposers are expected to develop and prototype one or more of the following (but not limited to):

• Minimally modify existing analysis and simulation codes to support automated interoperability with CAD models, while reducing or eliminating the need for preprocessing (for example, by combining legacy CAE tools with immersed boundary or meshfree methods)• Demonstrate interoperability of existing analysis and simulation codes with legacy and emerging types of CAD models (e.g. polygonal meshes, point clouds, voxels, mixed dimensional models, splines, and implicit representations)• Develop automated agents and protocols for applying legacy analysis and simulation codes to CAD models from different sources• Demonstrate automatic interfacing and composition of different types of analysis and simulation codes and apply them to CAD models from different sources

Proposers are encouraged to leverage both commercial and open source engineering simulation tools, collections of widely available solid and geometric tools and models, as well as cloud-based technologies.

The outcome of this investigation is expected to disrupt the existing design and manufacturing workflows, harvesting the power of existing CAE technologies, leveraging previous DOD investments, and leading to dramatic improvements in productivity and cost savings.

PHASE I: Demonstrate feasibility of fully-automated interoperability of analysis and simulation tools with CAD models from a variety of sources without being locked into a specific part family type (e.g., wings) and estimate the level of effort required to develop a fully functional demonstration for dealing with realistic complex simulation scenarios. The Phase I deliverable is a prototype and a final report that will include a Phase II work plan to achieve the stated goals.


PHASE II: Develop and test fully functional demonstrator for the technology identified and prototyped in Phase I. The technology should be tested using existing CAE codes and CAD models coming from third parties and diverse sources. The Phase II deliverable is a demonstrator and a final report that will contain the results and description of the technology as well as general recommendations for fully automated seamless integration of legacy CAE solutions and CAD models from diverse sources.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: This technology may lead to dramatically different approaches to interoperability between engineering systems that may open up new opportunities for the commercial space to adjust existing analysis codes, that represent many years of effort and expertise, to work in this new environment. In addition, it will enable automated design optimization and synthesis, which is a critical component of modern design, and is equally important for the commercial space as it is for designing future military platforms.

REFERENCES:

DARPA - 16

1. Alan C. O'Connor, J L. Dettbarn, L T. Gilday, Cost Analysis of Inadequate Interoperability in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry. (NISTGCR) - 04-867

2. Martin, Sheila, and Smita Brunnermeier. 1999. Interoperability Cost Analysis of the U.S. Automotive Supply Chain. Prepared for the National Institute for Standards and Technology, March 1999.

KEYWORDS: CAD, CAE, Interoperability, Design, Analysis, Simulation.

SB172-006 TITLE: Collective Allostatic Load

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Human Systems, Information Systems

OBJECTIVE: Design, develop, validate, and deploy integrated systems for collecting, aggregating, processing, and analyzing data related to “Collective Allostatic Load” (CAL), to provide quantitative and predictive measures of a team or group’s performance resilience or dysfunction in the face of potentially multiple acute and chronic stressors. Envisioned capabilities will enable near-real time measurement of a group’s state beyond the simple aggregation of individuals’ measures and behaviors, toward understanding the causes and consequences of internal and external factors on group performance over time.

DESCRIPTION: There is critical DoD need for the assessment of diverse, real-world human performance capabilities, particularly in novel, challenging, or adversarial contexts where individuals and teams likely face multiple stressors. The concept of allostasis has been introduced to describe an organism’s response to one or more of these stressors in order to return to homeostasis, which can be thought of as a functional state of resilience and adaptability1The resulting “wear and tear” on the organism from this process, thought to accumulate over time and which can lead to a number of health and performance dysfunctions, is referred to as “allostatic load” [2-5]. Identifying allostatic load has demonstrated some value for trying to quantify and predict individual trajectories related to health, wellness, and behaviors [6-13].

Much of the research on allostatic load has been done in medical contexts, where associated measures, e.g., a composite index of indicators of cumulative strain on neurophysiological systems, are frequently associated with poor clinical and health outcomes. However, some research on performance in operational, competitive, and high stress environments has found seemingly paradoxical effects, where individual measures that would normally be associated with poor outcomes (such as low vagal tone) are actually associated with better performance [15]. In part, these findings may reflect the fact that current measures of allostatic load fail to incorporate the important influence a person’s social context has on their biology. Group cohesion, leadership, morale, and trust have long been qualitatively, if not quantitatively, recognized as key elements in performance and resilience. These factors may shape whether a team’s members are able to effectively deal with challenges or threats and are protected against distress and other negative impacts on performance and wellness [16-20]. Without accounting for these intangible but important social influences, conventional interpretation and prediction of any given individual’s neurophysiological state and future performance may lead to conclusions that can be misleading, incomplete, or inaccurate.

Being able to quantitatively measure a team or group’s “Collective Allostatic Load” (CAL) at appropriate scales and frequencies may enable new capabilities for better predicting the current and future state and resilience of both a team and its individual members. This may further lead to capabilities for identifying and characterizing new design principles and assessment measures for human-machine teams, where – because humans are involved – such factors as trust, commitment, social support, and cohesion are likely to remain significant for shaping performance. The intent of this topic therefore is to solicit proposals for innovative quantitative and integrated approaches – addressing a full pipeline of data collection, aggregation, processing, analysis, updating, visualization, and recommendation/intervention - that might rigorously advance the goal of “making the important measurable, rather than making the measurable important” for better understanding and predicting both team and individual resilience and performance.

DARPA - 17

Proposers are encouraged to leverage a wide range of domains and technologies such as wearable and non-obtrusive sensors, data science and mathematics, machine learning, network science, cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, psychometrics and computational social science, while seeking to demonstrate the advantages and new capabilities their proposed approach may provide over current state of the art. Examples might include proposals that provide credible approaches to leveraging the growing volume and variety of personal and social data to enable new measures for quantifying CAL; new methods for integrating a suite of sensors that might include passive or social sensing platforms to enable repeated CAL measures; new reproducible experimental approaches to testing diagnostic and predictive validity of CAL measures; indirect assessments of CAL for longitudinal studies of teams or groups in different environments.

This topic is generally not seeking to fund approaches that are tightly tied to narrow experimental protocols or sensor systems, rely on restricted or excessively costly software and/or data sets, or are likely to demonstrate only incremental improvements over current, largely qualitative, often non-predictive approaches towards trying to measure team performance. Hardware and sensor approaches should leverage widely-available existing platforms and any proposed development efforts must focus on range of application, ease of use, and low barriers of entry for adoption of the approach by DOD, USG, commercial, and academic communities.

PHASE I: Identify your specific approach to a research pipeline, including which CAL measures will be developed and how they will be collected, analyzed, validated and reproduced. Justify your approach via detailed specification of the degree of improvement over current practice, or a description of the new capabilities afforded. Identify the teams or groups for which you are proposing to initially develop CAL measures, and explain their relevance for the DoD. Demonstrate the key technical principles behind the proposed solution, and identify mitigations for any barriers to scale. The demonstrations should provide proof of principle both for credible CAL measures as well as significant diagnostic and/or predictive improvements over current approaches for determining a team’s and its members’ resilience and performance. Phase I deliverables include a notional reference model that can achieve the core functionality of a complete product, credible experimental approaches to testing the generalizability of the CAL measures for more than one kind of team, validating and reproducing CAL measures, as well as an extensive commercialization/propagation plan for achieving widespread use.


PHASE II: Demonstrate scale, generalizability, and usability of the proposed approach. The demonstration should validate the predicted improvements and/or new capabilities versus current state of practice, as well as the engineering and design work required to easily scale. This may include integrations into existing systems and processes and the development of institutional partnerships. The Phase II deliverables include the prototype system and a final report that includes demonstration system designs and appropriate experimental test results.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Developed technology may motivate a number of insertions into the academic, commercial, and government systems and communities. Commercial applications may include product development, collaboration and workforce productivity tools, and sports/athletic uses. Military applications may include team design, selection, assessment, and enhancement.

REFERENCES:1. Sterling P, Eyer J. Allostasis: a new paradigm to explain arousal pathology. In: Fisher S, Reason J, eds. Handbook of Life Stress, Cognition and Health. 1988:629-649

2. McEwen BS. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine. 1998; 338: 171-179.

DARPA - 18

3. Stress and the individual. Mechanisms leading to disease. McEwen BS, Stellar E. Arch Intern Med. 1993 Sep 27; 153(18): 2093-101.

4. McEwen BS, Wingfield JC. The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Horm Behav. 2003 Jan; 43(1): 2-15.

5. McEwen BS. Allostasis and allostatic load: implications for neuropsychopharmacology. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2000 Feb; 22(2):108-24.

6. Backé EM, Seidler A, Latza U, Rossnagel K, Schumann B. The role of psychosocial stress at work for the development of cardiovascular diseases: a systematic review. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2012 Jan; 85(1): 67-79.

7. Li J, Jarczok MN, Loerbroks A, Schöllgen I, Siegrist J, Bosch JA, Wilson MG, Mauss D, Fischer JE.

8. Work stress is associated with diabetes and prediabetes: cross-sectional results from the MIPH Industrial Cohort Studies. Int J Behav Med. 2013 Dec; 20(4): 495-503.

9. Loerbroks A, Gadinger MC, Bosch JA, Stürmer T, Amelang M. Work-related stress, inability to relax after work and risk of adult asthma: a population-based cohort study. Allergy. 2010 Oct; 65(10): 1298-305.

10. Rugulies R, Norborg M, Sørensen TS, Knudsen LE, Burr H. Effort-reward imbalance at work and risk of sleep disturbances. Cross-sectional and prospective results from the Danish Work Environment Cohort Study. J Psychosom Res. 2009 Jan; 66(1): 75-83.

11. Siegrist J. Chronic psychosocial stress at work and risk of depression: evidence from prospective studies. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2008 Nov; 258 Suppl 5:115-9.

12. McEwen BS. Mood disorders and allostatic load. Biol Psychiatry. 2003 Aug 1; 54(3): 200-7.

13. Schulte P, Vainio H. Well-being at work--overview and perspective. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2010 Sep; 36(5): 422-9.

14. Kirsten W. Making the link between health and productivity at the workplace--a global perspective. Ind Health. 2010; 48(3):251-5.

15. Morgan CA, Aikins DE, Steffian G, Southwick S. Relation between cardiac vagal tone and performance in male military personnel exposed to high stress: Three prospective studies. Psychophysiology. 2007 Feb; 44(1): 120-7.

16. Li, Angela et al. Group Cohesion and Organizational Commitment: Protective Factors for Nurse Residents' Job Satisfaction, Compassion Fatigue, Compassion Satisfaction, and Burnout. Journal of Professional Nursing, Volume 30, Issue 1, 89 – 99.

17. Salas E, Grossman R, Hughes AM, Coultas CW. Measuring Team Cohesion. Human Factors 2015. Vol 57, Issue 3, pp. 365 – 374.

18. Dietz AS, Sierra MJ, Smith-Jentsch K, Salas E. Guiding Principles for Team Stress Measurement. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 2016; Vol 56, Issue 1, pp. 1074 – 1078.

19. Dietz AS, Weaver SJ, Sierra MJ, Bedwell WL, Salas E, Smith-Jentsch K. Unpacking the temporal and interactive effects of stress on individual and team performance. In Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2010; pp. 1017–1021.

DARPA - 19

20. Duhigg C. What Google Learned from its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. NY Times Magazine. Feb 25, 2016.

KEYWORDS: Performance; resilience; teams; social science; biology; sensors; stress; human-machine teaming

SB172-007 TITLE: Analyzing Human Dimensions of Software Engineering Processes


OBJECTIVE: Develop approaches to associate human behaviors, across the software development lifecycle, with the production of correct versus faulty or insecure code.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to develop technology for accurately identifying and analyzing different human factors within software development processes that may result in faulty and insecure code, and therefore impact the safety and security of resulting mission-critical applications. Identifying these factors remains a challenge, given the range of potential actors in the software engineering cycle (individual developers with varying levels of skills and knowledge, quality assurance personnel, user representatives, development team managers), as well as the potentially broad range of relevant human behaviors (from individual level effects like fatigue and inattention, to organization-level structural effects and economic pressures). Current cybersecurity efforts focus on identifying faults in software using techniques that scan source code for faults. Such approaches may also apply potentially privacy-invading techniques, such as behavioral anomaly detection to identify malicious intent. These approaches result in significant false positives, as it is difficult to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior (e.g., the difference between a delay in correctly implementing a security function while a developer researches the proper implementation and an omission due to developer fatigue). Furthermore, it is difficult to distinguish simple programming errors from systematic insertion of malicious code.

Proposers to this topic must present novel methods for identifying and analyzing human dimensions that impact software development processes and significantly increase the identification of faulty and/or insecure code prior to software deployment. Mechanisms to consider may include, but are not limited to: multi-dimensional analysis and modeling of individual and group behavioral characteristics (e.g., patterns of development activity, form and content of communication amongst developers and other stakeholders), in conjunction with source code analysis over time. Proposed techniques should be robust to a variety of software development languages, platforms, and systems. Techniques should consider both open-source and common DoD software development environments and processes, with a particular emphasis on integrating into advanced Agile, DevOps, and other emerging software engineering methodologies.

PHASE I: Develop innovative approaches for identifying faulty or insecure code that arises due to human dimensions that affect software development processes. Successfully demonstrate the identification and analysis of one or more classes of faulty or insecure code as a proof of concept on a real or realistic dataset, and show how false positives are reduced. The required Phase I deliverable is a final report documenting the technical approach, evaluation effort and quantitative results, as well as a detailed plan for rigorous evaluation of the approach in Phase II.


PHASE II: Build upon approaches developed during Phase I and execute the evaluation plan on an expanded dataset. Develop a fully functioning prototype that can be used to demonstrate capability for real-world software applications across DoD, commercial, and open-source software engineering processes. In addition to software implementation of the approach, Phase II deliverables will include a final report that documents the technical approach, evaluation effort and quantitative results.

DARPA - 20

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The capabilities developed within this project may apply to DoD. commercial, and open source software development programs to identify potentially fault and/or insecure prior to software deployment. This technology has broad applicability to commercial markets – especially those where such faulty code may have a significant impact (e.g., in healthcare, disaster relief, law enforcement).

REFERENCES:1. Wysopal, Classification and Detection of Application Backdoors, Black Hat DC Briefings, February 2008.

2. Ounce Labs, Malicious Code and the Ounce Solution, secure.ouncelabs.com.

3. Weber, et. al, A Toolkit for Detecting and Analyzing Malicious Software, ACSAC ’02, November 2002.

4. Wysopal, et. al, The Art of Software Security Testing: Identifying Software Security Flaws, Addison Wesley Professional, November 2006.

5. Payne, Integrating Security into the Software Development Process, IT Pro Magazine, IEEE Computer Society, March 2010.

6. Pfleeger & Caputo, Leveraging behavioral science to mitigate cyber security risk Computers and Security, 31 (4), June 2012.

7. Pletea, Vasilescu, & Serebrenik, Security and Emotion: Sentiment Analysis of Security Discussions on GitHub, in Proc. of the 11th Working Conf. on Mining Software Repositories, 2014, pp. 348–351

8. Dabbish, et al., Social Coding in GitHub: Transparency and Collaboration in an Open Software Repository, Proc. ACM 2012 Conf. on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2012.

9. Choi et al., Herding in Open Source Software Development: An Exploratory Study, in Proc. of CSCW 2013.

KEYWORDS: Software development, software engineering, agile development, DevOps, insider threats, malicious code, security

SB172-008 TITLE: Ecosystem of Secure Software Components around the seL4 Microkernel


OBJECTIVE: Build out the open-source ecosystem of secure software components around the seL4 operating system microkernel.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need for secure software components on top of seL4. Recently, seL4, a general-purpose high-performance operating system microkernel, was released to the public as open-source software [1]. Unique to seL4 is its unparalleled degree of assurance, achieved through formal software verification — the use of mathematical proofs to show that a piece of software satisfies specific properties. As such, seL4's implementation is formally proven functionally correct (bug-free) against its specification, is proven to enforce strong security properties, and its operations have proven safe upper bounds on their worst-case execution times [2]. The open-source release of seL4 includes source code, proofs and specifications, in addition to tools, libraries and example programs that can be used to build trustworthy systems [3].

With seL4 open-sourced, the opportunity emerges to create an extensive community of developers of dependable (safe, secure, reliable) systems, in application areas ranging from national security to automotive, avionics, medical implants, and industrial SCADA automation. In the defense sector, this technology promises to lead to more secure

DARPA - 21

military systems ranging from unmanned ground, air and underwater vehicles, to weapons systems, satellites, and command and control devices.

However, seL4 alone is not sufficient. It provides a foundation for developing dependable systems, creating a secure software base upon which further secure software layers (i.e., system and application services) can be layered to form a trustworthy system. Consequently, DARPA seeks to build out the open-source ecosystem of secure software components around seL4. Some examples of ecosystem components may include supporting additional processor architectures, communication protocols, network stacks, trusted boot, and dependable configuration tools, as well as application layers, and so on. DARPA also seeks to have these ecosystem components demonstrated in the context of applications that have potential for national impact. Note that because seL4 enables factored security arguments [4], the components and applications do not necessarily have to be fully formally verified, but they do need to have trust arguments that tie into the formal guarantees that seL4 provides, so that relevant security properties can be established.

PHASE I: Develop a plan for building open-source secure software components on top of seL4, together with a plan of how these components may be used to create dependable applications. Required Phase I deliverable is a final report that details the proposed plans, the types of components and specific applications targeted, the level of assurance expected to be achieved by the components, and the anticipated amount of software development and formal verification required.

For this topic, DARPA will accept proposals for work and cost up to $225,000 for Phase I. The preferred structure is a $175,000 base period, up to 12 months period of performance, and a $50,000, 4-month option period. Alternative structures may be accepted if sufficient rationale is provided.

PHASE II: Develop secure software components targeting seL4. Required Phase II deliverables include all documentation and software for the software components, relevant assurance arguments, and a software demonstration of the components working with seL4 in the context of a pre-transition application.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Potential DoD and commercial applications are cyber-physical systems that require a light weight operating systems kernel that has a high degree of assurance. In this context, high assurance means rigorous evidence of a correct implementation and/or evidence that the kernel provides the intrinsic properties of confidentiality and integrity. The goal of this effort is to provide the assured and secure underpinnings for cyber secure cyber physical systems. Often this takes the form of a computer controlling a physical system. This includes most DoD weapons systems, and a variety of systems that is of interest to both the DoD and commercial worlds. Including automotive, machinery control systems, computer peripherals, communication devices, and small interconnected devices collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

REFERENCES:1. seL4 website: http://www.sel4.systems/

2. Gerwin Klein, June Andronick, Kevin Elphinstone, Toby Murray, Thomas Sewell, Rafal Kolanski and Gernot Heiser, “Comprehensive formal verification of an OS microkernel”, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, Volume 32, Number 1, pp. 2:1-2:70, February 2014.

3. Github: https://github.com/seL4

4. Susan D. Alexander, Trust Engineering — Rejecting the Tyranny of the Weakest Link, Proceedings of ACSAC '12, Orlando, FL.

KEYWORDS: seL4, microkernel, operating system, formal verification, dependable systems, open-source software

SB172-009 TITLE: Accelerated Low-power Motion Planning for Real-time Interactive Autonomy

DARPA - 22

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Electronics, Information Systems

OBJECTIVE: Develop a system for embedded real-time motion trajectory planning in novel environments and on diverse Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)-constrained platforms.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to develop fieldable technology to enable embedded real-time adaptive motion planning in one or more applications of industrial or DoD mission relevance. As autonomous systems increase in capability, one key bottleneck for real-world applications is the high computational cost of planning each action to execute. Because the state space of possible trajectories is enormous, planning even simple motions in relatively sparse environments can be a challenge. In well-controlled settings (such as a factory floor), planning for common motions can be computed offline, and the pre-planned actions can be executed repeatedly as long as the work environment does not change much. In even slightly less structured environments, motion planning typically requires a significant amount of auxiliary computational resources yet still adds significant delays to each action taken. Speeding up motion planning would expand the range of tasks that autonomous machines can perform because they would be able to adapt to changes immediately and more fluidly learn from the consequences of actions. This would pave the way to systems that interact with their environments in near real-time.

A successful system will consider both the hardware and software aspects of this problem to provide real-time motion planning on Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)-constrained platforms. The solution should be general enough to serve a wide range of platforms and environments.

PHASE I: Design an initial approach to accelerating motion planning on SWaP-constrained platforms with an eventual goal of real-time planning. Elements of the approach may include innovations in algorithms and/or hardware as appropriate but must account for the impact of both on achieving real-time performance without increasing the overall SWaP requirements (i.e. a purely algorithmic approach must be able to make the case that the performance improvements are so large as to enable the desired performance on existing hardware, while a hardware approach must make the case that the algorithm chosen is the right target for specialized hardware and will not overly limit the platforms or environments that the solution will support). The design should not depend on a particular autonomous platform or task environment. Develop a prototype and/or simulation to demonstrate potential power/performance gains.

Required Phase I deliverables will include a final report detailing the technical approach and proposed system design along with an assessment of the expected performance compared with traditional methods. Metrics for this assessment include execution time (both for planning as well as pre- and post-processing, I/O, and other parts of the control pipeline), power consumption, and computational resources.


PHASE II: Develop and demonstrate prototype technology to enable embedded real-time adaptive motion planning in one or more applications of industrial or DoD mission relevance. Based on Phase I results, refine and finalize the design for a system for embedded real-time motion planning. Develop a hardware prototype to demonstrate the operational capability. Performance targets at this stage should demonstrate planning times on the order of milliseconds or less (significantly less than the timescales for perceptual processing in the target domain) and power consumption on the order of Watts. Generate a fabrication-ready design for the final hardware, as well as the associated interface and control software. The Phase II system must be general purpose in the sense that the hardware is not specialized to a particular autonomous platform or task environment.

Required Phase II deliverables include a hardware prototype and final report detailing the final system design and implemented interface and control software.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Successful technology in this area would enable autonomous mechanical systems to operate in complex settings that require new motions to be computed on-the-fly. Military and commercial applications for this technology may include industrial robotics (manufacturing or logistics) tasks or autonomous

DARPA - 23

vehicles for commercial or DoD use.

REFERENCES:1. Jia Pan, Dinesh Manocha, "Efficient Configuration Space Construction and Optimization for Motion Planning", Engineering, Volume 1, Issue 1, March 2015, Pages 046-057, ISSN 2095-8099, http://dx.doi.org/10.15302/J-ENG-2015009.

2. J. Pan and D. Manocha. GPU-based parallel collision detection for fast motion planning. International Journal of Robotics Research, 31(2):187–200, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0278364911429335

3. Sean Murray, Will Floyd-Jones, Ying Qi, Daniel Sorin, George Konidaris. "Robot Motion Planning on a Chip". In Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems. June 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2016.XII.004

4. Additional Information to clarify requirements for SB172-009 (updated in SITIS on 5/25/17)

KEYWORDS: autonomy, real-time motion planning, HRI, robotics, embedded systems, low-power

SB172-010 TITLE: Electronically Switchable Optical Filter

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Materials/Processes, Sensors

OBJECTIVE: Develop and demonstrate a compact, electronically actuated two state optical filter that can rapidly switch between broadband transmission, and narrow line bandpass with high out of band optical rejection.

DESCRIPTION: There is a critical DoD need to develop a compact active optical filter device for both broadband passive and LIDAR mode measurements to overcome current state-of-the-art challenges. Current focal planes are typically designed to measure passive imagery, but active arrays are available that can measure depth using the time of flight of a short-pulsed laser illuminator, also known as light detection and ranging (LIDAR). Passive imaging drives an optical design that maximizes throughput within the spectral band of interest. However, active mode operation at long range requires efficient rejection of background illumination, and the use of a laser line pass band in the optical path. Camera designs are emerging that are able to image in both passive and active modes. Tunable/switchable filters are available, including liquid crystal, acousto-optic, or Fabry Perot filters. But each suffers from challenges that include switching speed, high passband transmission, out of band blocking, narrow bandwidth, or large aperture. Actively tunable notch wavelength filters are not required but would enable tuning and calibration, as well as other potential applications. For example, hyperspectral imagers tend to be bulky due to their large optical systems, which are needed to simultaneously collect both the spatial and spectral data, and a switchable filter with both broad passband mode and tunable narrow wavelength mode would be beneficial. In another area of interest to the DoD, obscurants such as dust or smoke limit the ability of sensors to provide cues needed by pilots or vehicle drivers while conducting operations. Narrow-band filtering of sensor imagery has been shown to improve visibility in the presence of obscurants. This application does not require a bandpass as narrow as for active illumination. The ability to create a system that has a tunable bandpass filter for spectral imaging, while also allowing broadband passive operation could reduce the number of detectors, the system size and complexity required for several different applications.

Innovative approaches are sought which can simultaneously achieve all performance parameters below for laser line transmission.

1. PhysicalClear Aperture: 25 mm radiusMaximum component thickness: 5 mm

DARPA - 24

http://dx.doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2016.XII.004

2. Optical (Broadband transmission state)Transmission Band: 1300nm to 1700 nm (threshold), 900 nm to 1700 nm (objective)Average transmission > 45% (threshold), > 80% (objective)

3. Optical (Laser line filter state)Notch center: 1550 nm (threshold), tunable across full transmission band (objective)Notch FWHM: 5 nm (threshold), 1 nm (objective)Notch transmission: > 40% (threshold), > 80% (objective)Out of band rejection: Average OD > 2 (threshold), Average OD > 3 (objective)Switching time: < 10 ms (threshold), < 1 ms (objective)

For the alternative application of imaging through obscurants, all of the parameters above still apply, with the following exceptions. Proposals may address either laser line transmission, or obscurants transmission, or both.• Transmission Band: 8µm to 12µm (threshold), 7.5µm to 12µm (objective)• Narrowband FWHM: 1µm at a fixed center wavelength (threshold), 1µm FWHM tunable across the transmission band (objective).

Moving parts are acceptable, but must fit within the above size constraints, which precludes moving a filter in and out of the aperture as in a filter wheel. The design must be sufficiently robust to maintain performance under mechanical vibration. Filter designs that have the laser notch fixed in wavelength or that are real time selectable by the user are both of interest.

PHASE I: Develop a concept design and model key attributes to show technical feasibility. Produce laboratory demonstrations of high risk or critical components. The Phase I deliverable is a final report that will include detailed plans for Phase II and a description of the likely production cost in quantity.


PHASE II: Develop a working prototype of an electronically switchable filter including the incorporation of any materials as well as drive and diagnostic electronics required to demonstrate performance. Undertake thorough testing of the performance of the prototypes in a laboratory environment including evaluation of the sensitivity of the filter to variations in temperature and humidity or mechanical vibration. Fabrication and integration techniques to enable ultimate high volume manufacturing will be assessed. Military robustness and functionality will be evaluated. Phase II deliverable(s) include two working prototypes of the filter, including control electronics, as well as a final report that describes the performance of the device.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Sensor systems that enable autonomy using compact, inexpensive components in a wide range of environments is a need for many industrial, commercial, and consumer automotive, aeronautic, and robotics markets. For a dual-mode active/passive sensor, a switchable filter element would be a critical enabler for such a system. Other applications could include chemical/biological spectroscopy or displays.

REFERENCES:1. J.S. Milne, J.M. Dell, and A.J. Keating, "Widely Tunable MEMS-Based Fabry–Perot Filter," J Microelectromechanical Sys, 18(4), (2009), p. 905-913.

2. J.Y. Hardeberg, F. Schmitt, H. Brettel, "Multispectral color image capture using a liquid crystal tunable filter," Opt. Eng. 41(10) (2002) 2532-2538.

KEYWORDS: Tunable filter, laser line filter, imaging

DARPA - 25

· web viewdefense advanced research projects agency (darpa) 17.2 small business innovation...

Documents