Novel Sensing and Detection

The mission of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is to identify and pursue high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and to transform these initiatives into important, radically new, game-changing technologies for U.S. national security.

DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals for persistent, wide-area surveillance of small unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in urban terrain on a city-wide scale. Proposals are solicited for a scalable network of sensors on aerial platforms performing threat-agnostic UAS detection, classification, and tracking by looking over and into complex terrain.

DARPA is soliciting research proposals to demonstrate multifunctional imaging sensors that are reconfigurable through software. Proposers will build around a common digital framework that can be customized for specific applications. Both passive and active modes are desired. Also of interest are proposals that develop adaptive algorithms that optimize the operation of a reconfigurable sensor in real time to optimize information collection.