Resilience and Robustness

Today’s ground-based armored fighting vehicles are better protected than ever, but face a constantly evolving threat: weapons increasingly effective at piercing armor. While adding more armor has provided incremental increases in protection, it has also hobbled vehicle speed and mobility and ballooned development and deployment costs. To help reverse this trend, DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T) program recently awarded contracts to eight organizations.

It may not be obvious to humans, but the life of a plant is full of peril. Viruses, pests, fungi, herbicides, drought, pollution, salinity, flooding, and frost—the plants that we depend on for food, clean air, and materials are challenged by myriad threats, natural and man-made. By extension, human populations are put at risk when food security is challenged and the agricultural underpinnings of our economies are destabilized, especially when threats emerge rapidly or unexpectedly.

The DRC is a competition of robot systems and software teams vying to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters. Participating teams, representing some of the most advanced robotics research and development organizations in the world, are collaborating and innovating on a very short timeline to develop the hardware, software, sensors, and human-machine control interfaces that will enable their robots to complete a series of challenge tasks selected by DARPA for their relevance to disaster response.

DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office is hosting a Proposers Day meeting to provide information to potential applicants on the structure and objectives of the new Insect Allies program. Insect Allies will seek to develop vector-mediated modification technologies for mature plants to rapidly counter environmental and biological threats to crops. DARPA believes that the high specificity of genetic modification coupled with quick plant gene uptake could allow crops to be protected from threats within a single growing season.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) is hosting a Proposers Day in support of an anticipated Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Atomic Clock with Enhanced Stability (ACES) program. The Proposers Day will be held on Monday, February 1, 2016, from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM (EST) at the DARPA Conference Center, located at 675 N. Randolph Street, Arlington, Virginia 22203. The registration deadline is 5:00 PM EST on January 25, 2016. The purpose of this meeting is to provide information and promote additional discussion on the ACES program, address questions from potential proposers, and provide an opportunity for potential proposers to share their capabilities and ideas for teaming arrangements. The ACES Proposers Day will include overview presentations by government personnel, technical presentations by potential proposers and collaborators, and an open poster session to facilitate interaction and teaming. For more information, visit FedBizOpps.gov