DARPA IPTO projects likely to advance AGI

Here is a summary of projects of DARPA’s IPTO (Information Processing Technique Office) taken from its web site. It shows this office within DARPA is funding a lot of projects that are likely to speed the advance of AI.

Particularly if it is combined with the type of deep learning DARPA is proposing, described in one of my posts above, or if it combined with DARPA’s neuromorphic computing project.

(I have capitalized the portions of text that seem most relevant to the development of AI. Apologies to those who view all caps as screaming. In the limited word processor offered in this forum, it seems the most efficient way to let one scan highlighted text.).

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Cognitive Systems @ http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/thrust_areas/thrust_cs.asp
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COGNITIVE COMPUTING IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTER TECHNIQUES TO EMULATE HUMAN PERCEPTION, INTELLIGENCE AND PROBLEM SOLVING. Cognitive systems offer some important advantages over conventional computing approaches. For example, COGNITIVE SYSTEMS CAN LEARN FROM EVENTS THAT OCCUR IN THE REAL WORLD and so are better suited to applications that require EXTRACTING AND ORGANIZING INFORMATION IN COMPLEX UNSTRUCTURED SCENARIOS than conventional computing systems, which must have the right models built in a priori in order to be effective. Because many of challenges faced by military commanders involve vast amounts of data from sensors, databases, the Web and human sources, IPTO is creating cognitive systems that CAN LEARN AND REASON TO STRUCTURE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF RAW DATA INTO USEFUL, ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE WITH A MINIMUM OF HUMAN ASSISTANCE. IPTO is implementing cognitive technology in systems that support warfighters in the decision-making, management, and understanding of complexity in traditional and emergent military missions. These cognitive systems WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT THE USER IS REALLY TRYING TO DO AND PROVIDE PROACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, ASSISTANCE AND ADVICE. Finally, the increasing complexity, rigidity, fragility and vulnerability of modern information technology has led to ever-growing manpower requirements for IT support. The incorporation of COGNITIVE CAPABILITIES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS WILL ENABLE THEM TO SELF-MONITOR, SELF-CORRECT, AND SELF-DEFEND AS THEY EXPERIENCE SOFTWARE CODING ERRORS, HARDWARE FAULTS AND CYBER-ATTACK.

Programs

Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology (ASSIST)
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The main goal of the program is to enhance battlefield awareness via exploitation of soldier-collected information. The program will demonstrate advanced technologies and an integrated system for processing, digitizing and disseminating key data and knowledge captured by and for small squad leaders.

Bootstrapped Learning (BL)
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THE BOOTSTRAPPED LEARNING PROGRAM SEEKS TO MAKE INSTRUCTABLE COMPUTING A REALITY. THE "ELECTRONIC STUDENT" WILL LEARN FROM A HUMAN TEACHER WHO USES SPOKEN LANGUAGE, GESTURES, DEMONSTRATION, AND MANY OTHER METHODS ONE WOULD FIND IN A HUMAN MENTORED RELATIONSHIP. FURTHERMORE, IT WILL BUILD UPON LEARNED CONCEPTS AND APPLY THAT KNOWLEDGE ACROSS DIFFERENT FIELDS OF STUDY.

EMBEDDING BL TECHNOLOGY IN COMPUTING SYSTEMS WILL ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR TRAINED PROGRAMMERS IN MANY PRACTICAL SETTINGS, significantly accelerating human-machine instruction, and making possible on-the-fly upgrades by domain experts rather than computer experts. Target applications include a variety of field-trainable military systems, such as human-instructable unmanned aerial vehicles. However, BL technology is being developed and tested against a portfolio of training tasks across very diverse domains, thus it can be applied to any programmable, automated system. As such systems have become ubiquitous, and their operation inaccessible to the layperson, there is also the strong prospect of societal adoption and benefit.

Brood of Spectrum Supremacy (BOSS)
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The goal of the Brood of Spectrum Supremacy (BOSS) program is to provide a radio frequency (RF) spectrum analogue to night vision capabilities for the tactical warfighter, with a particular focus on RF-rich urban operations. The program is intended to apply collaborative processing capabilities for software-defined radios to specific military applications.

Cyber Trust (CT)
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The Cyber Trust program will create the technology and techniques to enable trustworthy information systems by:
1. Developing hardware, firmware, and microkernel architectures as necessary to provide foundational security for operating systems and applications.
2. Developing tools to find vulnerabilities in complex open source software.
3. Developing scalable formal methods to formally verify complex hardware/software.

Integrated Learning (IL)
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The Integrated Learning program SEEKS TO ACHIEVE REVOLUTIONARY ADVANCES IN MACHINE LEARNING BY CREATING SYSTEMS THAT OPPORTUNISTICALLY ASSEMBLE KNOWLEDGE FROM MANY DIFFERENT SOURCES IN ORDER TO LEARN. THE GOAL IS TO MOVE BEYOND THE CURRENT STATISTICALLY-ORIENTED PARADIGMS VIA THE INTEGRATION OF EXISTING LEARNING, REASONING, AND KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION TECHNOLOGIES INTO A COHERENT ARTIFACT THAT WILL BE ABLE TO LEARN MUCH MORE QUICKLY AND ROBUSTLY IN A WIDER RANGE OF APPLICATIONS. The program is FOCUSED UPON LEARNING MODELS OF ACTION FROM VERY SPARSE DATA, which will provide the ability to develop more effective military decision/planning support systems at lower costs. Target applications include military airspace management and medical logistics.

LANdroids
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Communications are essential to warfighters - they enable warfighters to share situational awareness and to stay coordinated with each other and command. Communications are important for voice and data and the importance for data traffic will only increase in the future. The problem is that urban settings hinder communications. Buildings, walls, vehicles, etc., create obstacles that impact the manner in which radio signals propagate. The net result is unreliable communications in these settings, which can leave warfighters, sensors, etc., without the benefit of reach back to command or each other.

This program will help to solve the urban communications problem by CREATING INTELLIGENT AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC RADIO RELAY NODES, CALLED LANDROIDS (LOCAL AREA NETWORK DROIDS), WHICH WORK TO ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN MESH NETWORKS THAT SUPPORT VOICE AND DATA TRAFFIC. Through autonomous movement and intelligent control algorithms, LANdroids can mitigate many of the communications problems present in urban settings, e.g., relaying signals into shadows and making small adjustments to reduce multi-path effects.

LANdroids will be pocket-sized and inexpensive. The concept of operations is that warfighters will carry several LANdroids, which they drop as needed during deployment. The LANdroids then form the mesh network and work to maintain it - establishing a communications infrastructure that supports the warfighters in that region.

Machine Reading (MR)
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The Machine Reading Program WILL BUILD A UNIVERSAL TEXT ENGINE THAT CAPTURES KNOWLEDGE FROM NATURALLY OCCURRING TEXT AND TRANSFORMS IT INTO THE FORMAL REPRESENTATIONS USED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) REASONING SYSTEMS. The Machine Reading Program will create an automated reading system that SERVES AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE CONTAINED IN NATURAL TEXTS AND THE FORMAL REASONING SYSTEMS THAT NEED SUCH KNOWLEDGE.

Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL)
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The mission of the PAL program is TO RADICALLY IMPROVE THE WAY COMPUTERS SUPPORT HUMANS BY ENABLING SYSTEMS THAT ARE COGNITIVE, I.E., COMPUTER SYSTEMS THAT CAN REASON, LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE, BE TOLD WHAT TO DO, EXPLAIN WHAT THEY ARE DOING, REFLECT ON THEIR EXPERIENCE, AND RESPOND ROBUSTLY TO SURPRISE. MORE SPECIFICALLY, PAL WILL DEVELOP A SERIES OF PROTOTYPE COGNITIVE SYSTEMS THAT CAN ACT AS AN ASSISTANT FOR COMMANDERS AND STAFF. Successful completion of this program will usher in a new era of computational support for a broad range of human activity.

Current software systems - in the military and elsewhere - are plagued by brittleness and the inability to deal with changing and novel situations - and must therefore be painstakingly programmed for every contingency. If PAL succeeds it could result in software systems that could learn on their own - that could adapt to changing situations without the need for constant reprogramming. PAL technology could drastically reduce the money spend by DoD on information systems of all kinds.

This is the FIRST BROAD-BASED RESEARCH PROGRAM IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS SINCE THE STRATEGIC COMPUTING INITIATIVE FUNDED BY DARPA IN THE 1980S. Since then, there have been significant developments in the technologies needed to enable cognitive systems, such as machine learning, reasoning, perception, and, multi-modal interaction. Improvements in processors, memory, sensors and networking have also dramatically changed the context of cognitive systems research. It is now time to encourage the various areas to come together again by focusing on by a common application problem: a Personalized Assistant that Learns.

Developing cognitive systems that learn to adapt to their user could dramatically improve a wide range of military operations. The development and application of intelligent systems to support military decision-making may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions. The technologies developed under the PAL program are intended to make military decision-making more efficient and more effective at all levels.

For example, today's command centers require hundreds of staff members to support a relatively small number of key decision-makers. If PAL succeeds, and develops a new capability for "cognitive assistants," those assistants could eliminate the need for large command staffs - enabling smaller, more mobile, less vulnerable command centers.

Self-Regenerative Systems (SRS)
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The goal of the SRS program is to develop technology for building military computing systems that provide critical functionality at all times, in spite of damage caused by unintentional errors or attacks. All current systems suffer eventual failure due to the accumulated effects of errors or attacks. The SRS program aims to develop technologies enabling military systems to learn, regenerate themselves, and automatically improve their ability to deliver critical services. If successful, self-regenerative systems will show a positive trend in reliability, actually exceeding initial operating capability and approaching a theoretical optimal performance level over long time intervals.

Situation Aware Protocols in Edge Network Technologies (SAPIENT)
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The mission of the Situation Aware Protocols in Edge Network Technologies (SAPIENT) program is to create a new generation of adaptive communication systems that achieve new levels of functionality through situation-awareness.

Transfer Learning (TL)
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The TRANSFER LEARNING PROGRAM SEEKS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF REUSING KNOWLEDGE DERIVED IN ONE DOMAIN TO HELP EFFECT SOLUTIONS IN ANOTHER DOMAIN. Adaptive systems, systems that respond to changes in their environment, stand to benefit significantly from the application of TL technology. Today's adaptive systems need to be trained for every new situation they encounter. This requires building new training data, which is the most expensive and most limiting aspect of deploying such systems. The TL PROGRAM ADDRESSES THIS SHORTCOMING BY IMBUING ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS WITH THE ABILITY TO ENCAPSULATE WHAT THEY HAVE LEARNED AND APPLY THIS KNOWLEDGE TO NEW SITUATIONS. Thus, rather than having to be retrained for each new context, TL enables systems to leverage what they have already learned in order to be effective much sooner and with less effort spent on training. Early applications of TL technology include adaptive ISR systems, robotic vision and manipulation, and automated population of databases from unstructured text.




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Command & Control @ http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/thrust_areas/thrust_cc.asp
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Command and control is the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of a mission. Without question the missions faced by our warfighters today (such as counter-insurgency) and the operational environments (such as cities) are more complex and dangerous than ever before. While following their rules of engagement, warfighters must make rapid decisions based on limited observables interpreted in the context of the evolving situation. Command and control systems must augment the observables within constrained timelines and present actionable results to the warfighter. IPTO ENABLES WARFIGTER SUCCESS BY CREATING TECHNOLOGIES AND SYSTEMS THAT PROVIDE TAILORED, CONSISTENT, PREDICTIVE SITUATION AWARENESS ACROSS ALL COMMAND ELEMENTS, AND CONTINUOUS SYNCHRONIZATION OF SENSING, STRIKE, COMMUNICATIONS, AND LOGISTICS TO MAXIMIZE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MILITARY OPERATIONS WHILE MINIMIZING UNDESIRABLE SIDE EFFECTS. In counter-insurgency operations, targets of interest are often not known until a significant event (e.g. detonation of IED) occurs. In those instances, reliably and quickly determining the origin of the devices/vehicles becomes the key to preventing subsequent attacks. IPTO is creating systems that collect wide area observables in the absence of any strong a priori cues, analyze the prior time history of events and track insurgent activities to their point of origin.

Programs


Conflict Modeling, Planning, and Outcomes Experimentation (COMPOEX)
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DARPA's Conflict Modeling, Planning, and Outcomes Experimentation (COMPOEX) program is developing a suite of tools that will help military commanders and their civilian counterparts to plan, analyze and conduct complex campaigns. "Complex" here refers to those operations - often of long duration and large scale - that require careful consideration of not only traditional military, but also political, social, economic actions and ramifications.

Deep Green (DG)
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The Deep Green concept is an innovative approach to using simulation to support ongoing military operations while they are being conducted. The basic approach is to MAINTAIN A STATE-SPACE GRAPH OF POSSIBLE FUTURE STATES. SOFTWARE AGENTS USE INFORMATION ON THE TRAJECTORY OF THE ONGOING OPERATION, VICE A PRIORI STAFF ESTIMATES AS TO HOW THE BATTLE MIGHT UNFOLD, AS WELL AS SIMULATION TECHNOLOGIES, TO ASSESS THE LIKELIHOOD OF REACHING SOME SET OF POSSIBLE FUTURE STATES. THE LIKELIHOOD, UTILITY, AND FLEXIBILITY OF POSSIBLE FUTURE NODES IN THE STATE SPACE GRAPH ARE COMPUTED AND EVALUATED TO FOCUS THE PLANNING EFFORTS. This notion is called anticipatory planning and involves the generation of options (either manual or semi-automated) ahead of "real time," before the options are needed. In addition, the Deep Green concept provides mechanisms for adaptive execution, which can be described as "late binding," or choosing a branch in the state space graph at the last moment to maintain flexibility. By using information acquired from the ongoing operation, rather than assumptions made during the planning phase, commanders and staffs can make more informed choices and focus on building options for futures that are becoming more likely.

Heterogeneous Airborne Reconnaissance Team (HART)
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The complexity of counter-insurgency operations especially in the urban combat environment demands multiple sensing modes for agility and for persistent, ubiquitous coverage. The HART system implements collaborative control of reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) assets, so that the information can be made available to warfighters at every echelon.

Persistent Operational Surface Surveillance and Engagement (POSSE)
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The POSSE program is building a REAL-TIME, ALL-SOURCE EXPLOITATION SYSTEM TO PROVIDE INDICATIONS AND WARNINGS OF INSURGENT ACTIVITY DERIVED FROM AIRBORNE AND GROUND-BASED SENSORS. Envisioning a day when our sensors can be integrated into a cohesive "ISR Force", it's building AN INTEGRATED SUITE OF SIGNAL PROCESSING, PATTERN ANALYSIS, AND COLLECTION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE that will increase reliability, reduce manpower, and speed up responses.

Predictive Analysis for Naval Deployment Activities (PANDA)
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The current CONOPS for achieving situation awareness in the maritime domain calls for close monitoring of those entities that we already have reason to be concerned about (i.e., we already suspect are threats or which carry cargos that could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people). PANDA will ADVANCE TECHNOLOGIES AND DEVELOP AN ARCHITECTURE THAT WILL ALERT WATCHSTANDERS TO ANOMALOUS SHIP behavior AS IT OCCURS, allowing them to detect potentially dangerous behavior before it causes harm. These technologies and systems will be transitioned to various partners and customers throughout the development process, ensuring that the end product meets the needs of the services and watchstanders. Participants will work closely with the transition partners to aid in this process.

Urban Leader Tactical Response, Awareness & Visualization (ULTRA-Vis)
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Current military operations are focusing efforts on urban and asymmetric warfare, as well as distributed operations, but small unit leaders lack the capability to issue commands and share mission-relevant information in an urban environment non-line-of-sight. Various factors that can impact mission effectiveness and tempo of operations are:
1. Leaders communicate by shouting and hand signals;
2. Teams operate within earshot and line-of-sight;
3. Intra-squad radios are hard to hear; and
4. Leaders must stop to use handheld displays.
Military operations in the urban terrain (extensive areas with hostile forces, non-combatant populations, and complex infrastructure) require special capabilities and agility to conduct close-combat operations under highly dynamic, adverse conditions. In short, tactical leaders need the ability to adapt on the move, coordinate small unit actions and execute commands across a wider area of engagement. SIGNIFICANT TACTICAL ADVANTAGES COULD BE REALIZED THROUGH THE SMALL UNIT LEADER'S ABILITY TO INTUITIVELY GENERATE/ROUTE COMMANDS AND TIMELY ACTIONABLE COMBAT INFORMATION TO THE APPROPRIATE TEAM OR INDIVIDUAL WARFIGHTER IN A READILY UNDERSTOOD FORMAT THAT AVOIDS INFORMATION OVERLOAD.

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High Productivity Computing @ http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/thrust_areas/thrust_hpc.asp
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IPTO is DEVELOPING THE HIGH-PRODUCTIVITY, HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTER HARDWARE AND THE ASSOCIATED SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY BASE REQUIRED TO SUPPORT FUTURE CRITICAL NATIONAL SECURITY NEEDS FOR COMPUTATIONALLY-INTENSIVE AND DATA-INTENSIVE APPLICATIONS. THESE TECHNOLOGIES WILL LEAD TO NEW MULTI-GENERATION PRODUCT LINES OF COMMERCIALLY VIABLE, SUSTAINABLE COMPUTING SYSTEMS FOR A BROAD SPECTRUM OF SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS, including both supercomputer and embedded computing. The goal is to ensure accessibility and usability of high end computing to a wide range of application developers, not just computational science experts. This is ESSENTIAL FOR MAINTAINING THE NATION'S STRENGTH IN SUPERCOMPUTING BOTH FOR ULTRA LARGE-SCALE ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS AND FOR SURVEILLANCE AND RECONNAISSANCE DATA ASSIMILATION AND EXPLOITATION. ONE OF THE MAJOR CHALLENGES CURRENTLY FACING THE DOD IS THE PROHIBITIVELY HIGH COST, TIME, AND EXPERTISE REQUIRED TO BUILD LARGE COMPLEX SOFTWARE SYSTEMS. POWERFUL NEW APPROACHES AND TOOLS ARE NEEDED TO ENABLE THE RAPID AND EFFICIENT PRODUCTION OF NEW SOFTWARE, INCLUDING SOFTWARE THAT CAN BE EASILY CHANGED TO ADDRESS NEW REQUIREMENTS AND TO PLATFORM AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS. Computing capabilities must progress dramatically if U.S. forces are to exploit an ever-increasing diversity, quantity, and complexity of sensor and other types of data. Doing so both in command centers and on the battlefield will require significantly increasing performance and significantly decreasing power and size requirements.

Programs [there was currently no available description for these programs]


Architecture-Aware Compiler Environment (AACE)
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Disruptive Manufacturing Technology, Software Producibility (DMT-SWP)
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High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS)
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Language Processing @ http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/thrust_areas/thrust_lp.asp
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At present, the exploitation of foreign language speech and text is slow and labor intensive and as a result, the availability, quantity and timeliness of information from foreign-language sources is limited. IPTO is creating NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND SYSTEMS FOR AUTOMATING THE TRANSCRIPTION AND TRANSLATION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES. These language processing capabilities will enable our military to exploit large volumes of speech and text in multiple languages, thereby increasing situational awareness at all levels of command. In particular, IPTO is AUTOMATING THE CAPABILITY TO MONITOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE MEDIA AND TO EXPLOIT FOREIGN LANGUAGE NEWS BROADCASTS with one-way (foreign-language-to-English) translation technologies. IPTO is also DEVELOPING HAND-HELD, TWO-WAY (FOREIGN-LANGUAGE-TO-ENGLISH AND ENGLISH-TO-FOREIGN-LANGUAGE) SPEECH-TO-SPEECH TRANSLATION SYSTEMS that enable the warfighter on the ground to communicate directly with local populations in their native language. Finally, IPTO is creating TECHNOLOGIES TO EXPLOIT THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN HARD-COPY DOCUMENTS AND DOCUMENT IMAGES RESIDENT ON MAGNETIC AND OPTICAL MEDIA CAPTURED IN THE FIELd. Making full use of all of the information extracted from foreign-language sources REQUIRES THE CAPABILITY TO AUTOMATICALLY COLLATE, FILTER, SYNTHESIZE, SUMMARIZE, AND PRESENT RELEVANT INFORMATION IN TIMELY AND RELEVANT FORMS. IPTO is DEVELOPING NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING SYSTEMS TO ENHANCE LOCAL, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL SITUATIONAL AWARENESS AND ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR TRANSLATORS AND SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS AT EVERY MILITARY SITE WHERE FOREIGN-LANGUAGE INFORMATION IS OBTAINED.

Programs


Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE)
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The goal of the GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program is to DEVELOP AND APPLY COMPUTER SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES TO ABSORB, TRANSLATE, ANALYZE, AND INTERPRET HUGE VOLUMES OF SPEECH AND TEXT IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES, eliminating the need for linguists and analysts, and automatically providing relevant, concise, actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion. Automatic processing "engines" will convert and distill the data, delivering pertinent, consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests.

Multilingual Automatic Document Classification Analysis and Translation (MADCAT)
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The United States has a compelling need for reliable information affecting military command, soldiers in the field, and national security. Currently, our warfighters encounter foreign language images in many forms, including, but not limited to graffiti, road signs, printed media, and captured records in the form of paper and computer files. Given the quantity of foreign language material, it is difficult to interpret the salient pieces of information, much of which is either ignored or analyzed too late to be of any use. The mission of the Multilingual Automatic Document Classification Analysis and Translation (MADCAT) Program is to AUTOMATICALLY CONVERT FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEXT IMAGES INTO ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTS, thus eliminating the need for linguists and analysts while automatically providing relevant, distilled actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion.

Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC)
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Today, phrase-based translation devices are being tactically deployed. These one-way devices translate English input into pre-recorded phrases in target languages. While such systems are useful in many operational settings, the inability to translate foreign speech into English is a significant limitation. The mission of the Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC) program is to demonstrate capabilities to rapidly develop and field TWO-WAY TRANSLATION SYSTEMS THAT ENABLE SPEAKERS OF DIFFERENT LANGUAGES TO SPONTANEOUSLY COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER IN REAL-WORLD TACTICAL SITUATIONS.


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Sensors & Processing @ http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/thrust_areas/thrust_sp.asp
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U.S. forces and sensors are increasingly networked across service, location, domain (land, sea and air), echelon, and platform. This trend increases responsiveness, flexibility and combat effectiveness, but also increases the inherent complexity of sensor and information management. IPTO is CREATING SYSTEMS THAT CAN DERIVE HIGH-LEVEL INFORMATION FROM SENSOR DATA STREAMS (FROM BOTH MANNED AND UNMANNED SYSTEMS), PRODUCE MEANINGFUL SUMMARIES OF COMPLEX DYNAMIC SITUATIONS, AND SCALE TO THOUSANDS OF SOURCES. Future battlefields will continue to be populated with targets that use mobility and concealment as key survival tactics, and high-value targets will range from quiet submarines, to mobile missile/artillery, to specific individual insurgents. IPTO develops and demonstrates system CONCEPTS THAT COMBINE NOVEL APPROACHES TO SENSING, SENSOR PROCESSING, SENSOR FUSION, AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT TO ENABLE PERVASIVE AND PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCE OF THE BATTLESPACE AND DETECTION, IDENTIFICATION, TRACKING, ENGAGEMENT AND BATTLE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT FOR HIGH-VALUE TARGETS IN ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS AND IN ALL POSSIBLE COMBAT ENVIRONMENTS. Finally, warfighters in the field must concentrate on observing their immediate environment but at the same time must maintain awareness of the larger battlespace picture, and as a result they are susceptible to being swamped by too much detail. IPTO is creating system approaches that can exploit context and advanced information display/presentation techniques to overcome these challenges.

Programs

Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System (ARGUS-IS)
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The mission of the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) program is to provide military users a flexible and responsive capability to find, track and monitor events and activities of interest on a continuous basis in areas of interest.

The overall objective is to increase situational awareness and understanding enabling an ability to find and fix critical events in a large area in enough time to influence events. ARGUS - IS provides military users an "eyes-on" persistent wide area surveillance capability to support tactical users in a dynamic battlespace or urban environment.

FOPEN Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and Engagement Radar (FORESTER)
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The Foliage Penetration Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and Engagement Radar (FORESTER) is a joint DARPA/Army program to develop and demonstrate an advanced airborne UHF radar capable of detecting people and vehicles moving under foliage. FORESTER will provide robust, wide-area, all-weather, persistent stand-off coverage of moving vehicles and dismounted troops under foliage, filling the surveillance gap that currently exists.

Multispectral Adaptive Networked Tactical Imaging System (MANTIS)
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The MANTIS program will develop, integrate and demonstrate A SOLDIER-WORN VISUALIZATION SYSTEM, CONSISTING OF A HEAD-MOUNTED MULTISPECTRAL SENSOR SUITE WITH A HIGH RESOLUTION DISPLAY AND A HIGH PERFORMANCE VISION PROCESSOR (ASIC), CONNECTED TO A SOLDIER-WORN POWER SUPPLY AND RADIO. The helmet-mounted MANTIS Vision Processor will provide the soldier with digitally fused, multispectral video imagery in real time from the Visible/Near Infrared (VNIR), the Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) and the Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) helmet-mounted sensors via the high resolution visor display. The processor adaptively fuses the digital imagery from the multispectral sensors providing the highest context, best nighttime imagery in real-time under varying battlefield conditions. The system also ALLOWS THE VIDEO IMAGERY TO BE RECORDED AND PLAYED BACK ON DEMAND AND ALLOWS THE OVERLAY OF BATTLEFIELD INFORMATION. MANTIS will exploit the existing soldier radio network and PROVIDE SOLDIER-TO-SOLDIER SHARING OF VIDEO CLIPS VIEWED AS PICTURE-IN-PICTURE ON THEIR HELMET MOUNTED DISPLAYS. MANTIS WILL "regain the nighttime advantage" and "EXPLOIT THE NET" TO PROVIDE THE INDIVIDUAL SOLDIER WITH UNPRECEDENTED SITUATIONAL AWARENESS.

NetTrack (NT)
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PERSISTENT RECONNAISSANCE, SURVEILLANCE, TRACKING AND TARGETING OF EVASIVE VEHICLES IN CLUTTERED ENVIRONMENTS.

Quint Networking Technology (QNT)
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In a network centric battle space, U.S. Forces must exploit distributed sensor platforms to rapidly and precisely find, fix, track, and engage static and moving targets in real time. There are several relevant thrusts to time critical targeting and strike areas within the Services. One aspect of these thrusts is to use data links to fully integrate tactical UAVs, dismounted ground forces and weapon control into the future network centric warfare environment.

The Quint Networking Technology (QNT) is a modular network data link program focused on providing a multi-band modular capability to close the seams between five nodes - Aircraft, UCAV, Weapons, tactical UAV and dismounted ground forces. The specific intended QNT hardware users are weapons, air control forces on the ground (dismounted) and tactical UAV's. These three are the focal points of the QNT effort with the other two elements using hardware and waveforms from established programs. The assumption is these other two types of platforms provide a starting point for building capability for the other three elements.

Standoff Precision ID in 3-D (SPI-3D)
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The SPI-3D program will develop and demonstrate the ability to provide precision geolocation of ground targets combined with high-resolution 3D imagery at useful standoff ranges. These dual capabilities will be provided using a sensor package composed of commercially available components. It will be capable of providing "optical quality precision at radar standoff ranges" and have the ability to overcome limited weapons effects obscuration, and penetrate moderate foliage. The figure below shows the operational concept of the SPI-3D system.

Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT)
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The recognition of targets in urban environments poses unique operational challenges for the warfighter. Historically, target recognition has focused on conventional military objects, with particular emphasis on military vehicles such as tanks and armored personnel carriers. In many cases, these threats exhibit unique signatures and are relatively geographically isolated from densely populated areas. The same cannot be said of today's asymmetric threats, which are embedded in urban areas, thereby forcing U.S. Forces to engage enemy combatants in cities with large civilian populations. Under these conditions, even the most common urban objects can have tactical significance: trash cans can contain improvised explosive devices, doors can conceal snipers, jersey barriers can block troop ingress, roof tops can become landing zones, and so on. Today's urban missions involve analyzing a multitude of urban objects in the area of regard. As military operations in urban regions have grown, the need to identify urban objects has become an important requirement for the military. URGENT WILL ENABLE UNDERSTANDING THE LOCATIONS, SHAPES, AND CLASSIFICATIONS OF OBJECTS FOR A BROAD RANGE OF PRESSING URBAN MISSION PLANNING ANALYTICAL QUERIES (E.G., FINDING ALL ROOF TOP LANDING ZONES ON THREE STORY BUILDINGS CLEAR OF VERTICAL OBSTRUCTIONS AND VERIFYING INGRESS ROUTES WITH MAXIMUM COVER FOR GROUND TROOPS). IN ADDITION, URGENT WILL ENABLE AUTOMATED TIME-SENSITIVE SITUATION ANALYSIS (E.G., ALERTING FOR VEHICLES FOUND ON A ROAD SHOULDER AFTER DARK AND ESTIMATING DAMAGE TO A BUILDING EXTERIOR AFTER AN EXPLOSION) THAT WILL MAKE A SIGNIFICANT POSITIVE IMPACT ON URBAN OPERATIONS.

Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER)
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VADER is a RADAR SYSTEM DESIGNED TO ENABLE THE SURVEILLANCE AND TRACKING OF GROUND VEHICLES AND DISMOUNTS from a Warrior (or similar) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform. VADER will PROVIDE REAL-TIME DATA PRODUCTS TO A COMMAND ECHELONS AT WHICH THE REAL-TIME INFORMATION WILL BE IMMEDIATELY ACTIONABLE. For example, a warfighter could use the Warrior UAV with VADER installed to monitor a road, track a vehicle to a stop, OBSERVE DISMOUNT MOTION NEAR THE VEHICLE, CHARACTERIZE CERTAIN MOTIONS (LIKE SOMEONE CARRYING A HEAVY LOAD), AND MEASURE A GROUND DISTURBANCE AFTER THE VEHICLE DEPARTS.

Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT)
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The overall goal of the Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) program is to produce A SCALABLE AND EXTENSIBLE END-TO-END SYSTEM THAT ENABLES MILITARY ANALYSTS TO OBTAIN GREATER VALUE FROM AERIAL VIDEO COLLECTED IN COMBAT ENVIRONMENTS.


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Emerging Technologies @ http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/thrust_areas/thrust_ep.asp
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IPTO is EXPLORING SEVERAL EMERGING INFORMATION PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES INCLUDING NOVEL USES OF MODELING AND SIMULATION TO CREATE NEW BATTLE COMMAND PARADIGMS; REVOLUTIONARY APPROACHES TO POWER, SIZE AND PROGRAMMABILITY AS ENABLERS FOR COMPUTING AT THE EXASCALE; COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE AS THE FOUNDATION FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD FACED BY THE WARFIGHTER; ADVANCED SENSING ARCHITECTURES INCLUDING NEW SENSING MODALITIES TO COUNTER DIFFICULT THREATS; AUTOMATED STORAGE, INDEXING, ANALYSIS, CORRELATION, SEARCH, AND RETRIEVAL OF MULTIMEDIA DATA; AND TECHNIQUES TO ENABLE INFORMATION SHARING ACROSS ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES AND ADMINISTRATIVE/SECURITY DOMAINS.

Programs


Advanced Speech Encoding (ASE)
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Speech is the most natural form of human-to-human communications. However, THE MILITARY IS OFTEN FORCED TO OPERATE IN ENVIRONMENTS WHERE SPEECH IS DIFFICULT. For example, the quality and intelligibility of the acoustic signal can be severely degraded by HARSH ACOUSTIC NOISE BACKGROUNDS that are common in military environments. In addition, many situations also require war fighters to operate in silence and in a stealth mode so that their presence and intent are not compromised. THE ADVANCED SPEECH ENCODING (ASE) PROGRAM WILL DEVELOP TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL ENABLE COMMUNICATION IN THESE CHALLENGING MILITARY ENVIRONMENTS.

Information Theory for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (ITMANET)
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The mission of the Information Theory for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (ITMANET) program is TO DEVELOP AND EXPLOIT MORE POWERFUL INFORMATION THEORY CONCERNING MOBILE WIRELESS NETWORKS. The hypothesis of this program is that a specific challenge problem --- better understanding of MANET capacity limits --- will lead to actionable implications for network design and deployment. The anticipated byproducts of a more evolved theory include new separation theorems to inform wireless network "layering" as well as new protocol ideas.

Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS)
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The Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS) program seeks to DEVELOP A COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED, AUTOMATED, GENERALIZABLE, AND VALIDATED SYSTEM TO MONITOR, ASSESS, AND FORECAST NATIONAL, SUB-NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL CRISES IN A WAY THAT SUPPORTS DECISIONS ON HOW TO ALLOCATE RESOURCES TO MITIGATE THEM. ICEWS will provide Combatant Commanders (COCOMs) with a powerful, systematic capability to anticipate and respond to stability challenges in the Area of Responsibility (AOR); allocate resources efficiently in accordance to the risks they are designed to mitigate; and track and measure the effectiveness of resource allocations toward end-state stability objectives, in near-real time.

RealWorld
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The RealWorld program exploits technology innovation to PROVIDE EVERY WARFIGHTER WITH THE ABILITY TO OPEN A LAPTOP COMPUTER AND RAPIDLY CREATE A MISSION-SPECIFIC SIMULATION IN A RELEVANT GEO-SPECIFIC 3-D WORLD. currently, major simulation programs are time consuming, expensive, and require graduate-level expertise in computer programming. realworld will remove these barriers and, for the first time, PUT THE TACTICAL ADVANTAGE OF REAL-TIME SIMULATION DIRECTLY INTO THE HANDS OF THE WARFIGHTER.