Award Data

In this direct to Phase II effort, Hearing Components will develop and deliver twelve functional prototypes of a Canine Active Hearing Protection System. This in/ear system will protect multipurpose canines (MPCs) from damaging low/frequency noises while still providing them with situational awareness and the ability to localize sounds as well as receive communication from a handler. The system wi ...

Modern, networked, cyber-physical systems pose a special challenge for  Cyber Vulnerability Assessment.  Communication protocols may be inherently vulnerable, may be implemented in an unsafe manner, or may be vulnerable to timing attacks, in which carefully-timed inputs can be used to disrupt system operations. Developed under AFRL's NOVA program, Adventium Labs’ VOLTA software automates the p ...

Most AI agent systems are extremely brittle: they use hand-crafted or laboriously-learned models that cannot handle situations that deviate widely from their expectations or training set. Real-world applications required more robust and resilient methods. In the original REPAIR Phase I and Phase II projects, we developed general metaheuristics for decentralized multi-agent systems that are capable ...

OBLONGATA proposes an in-depth analysis of data collected during MEDULLA’s 4 1-month long HI-SEAS missions. As such it is a continuation of the work performed under MEDULLA. The projects complement each other to form MEDULLA OBLONGATA. The Base Phase proposal describes all measures SIFT and collaborators collected during missions M1-M4 (M4 is ongoing), as well as our analytical approach, and pre ...

NextGen RF Design will research the feasibility of what we call a Highly Adaptive Radio (HAR) to achieve low probability of detection (PDD) and intercept (LPI) optimized for low SWaP and is capable of SATCOM and terrestrial communications. Our study will revolve around the concept of autonomously switching a variety of over-the-air protocols to adapt to the conditions of a contested environment. W ...

The Software Implementation from Rigorous Formal Usable Requirements (SIRFUR) project will develop and deploy model-based system engineering (MBSE) tools to provide formal verification evidence that system-level safety and security requirements represented in system models are accurately reflected in the subsystem components and the code that implements them.  SIRFUR will autogenerate embedded C ...

Collective allostatic load (CAL) is known to cause the degredation of team performance in a variety of contexts. SIFT is proposing MEDULLA (Monitoring Emergent Duress Under Long-Lasting Allostasis), a multi-method approach based on physiological, cognitive, and behavioral measures to develop and fine-tune algorithms for assessing CAL and predicting changes to CAL that can affect team performance. ...

TYBALT (Transcending cYber Barriers with Automated Language Tracking) primary goal is the automatic detection of adverse intentions against US forces via publicly available information (PAI). Our “Intent to Act Adversely Detector” (ITAAD) is based on empirically-driven cognitive models linked to features detectable in the structure (rather than content) of written language: Integrative Complex ...

A motif is a non-commonplace, specific narrative element (such as a striking event, character, or object) that is repeated across stories found within the same cultural group, and concisely expresses complex cultural and political ideas through the inferences it evokes about a particular situation. If we can track motifs in communications, we will have a significant advantage in modeling informati ...

Military systems operate in complex, adversarial environments where their initial planned operations are often overcome by events, but soldiers use those systems in creative ways to achieve their mission objectives. For example, complex ground robotic systems that were initially deployed for surveillance and explosive ordinance disposal have instead been used as decoys, ammunition carriers, and ot ...