Background
The Technical Advisory Board (TAB) of the Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise (JGRE) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is tasked with evaluating ground robotics technologies that are important to the military's mission. JGRE plans to use the Government Fiscal Year (“GFY”) 2008 TAB recommendations as guidance in forming Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to be issued for funding in GFY 2009 and beyond.
This year, for the first time, direct input will be solicited from private industry, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations for the ground robotic TAB process. The mechanism for this input will be the newly formed Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC). Members of the RTC will be able to make "Technology Concept Submissions" to the TAB.
RTC members will also be able to elect individuals from RTC member companies and organizations to serve as Industry representatives on the TAB (until now, only representatives from Government laboratories have served on the TAB). The Industry representatives will help facilitate the presentation and review of the RTC members’ Technology Concept Submissions and, together with their Government counter-parts, evaluate all such submissions, including those separately submitted by the Government laboratories. Please note that the role of the TAB is not to make decisions regarding which technologies to invest in, but rather to assess each proposed technology individually in terms of its maturity, readiness and applicability for Government purposes. All decisions about which concepts are selected as the basis for RFP's are subsequently made by JGRE based on the TAB assessments and inputs from other Government departments and agencies.
The Technology Concept Submission process and TAB review are highly compressed this year. The schedule compression is required in order to accommodate the government's timeline and the schedule needed to establish the RTC. In Fiscal Year 2009 and beyond, the election of RTC Technology Committee members and the solicitation of Technology Concept Submissions will happen at a much more deliberate pace.
Government's TAB Process
The government's TAB process for ground robotics is organized around four Joint Capability Areas (JCA's):
Force Application
Force Protection
Logistics
More detail on these JCA's is provided in the Technology Concept Submission form. The JCA structure reflects how the military thinks about its mission. The JCA structure also reflect how DoD funding is organized to procure new hardware and software.
It is very important to realize that the military user community does not care about "how many degrees of freedom a robotic manipulator arm" might have -- their concern is "does it help me do my mission better?" The biggest challenge for most companies that are new to working with the military will be to avoid the trap of promoting a new technical capability for its own sake. Technology Concept Submissions must instead make it clear to the military how a new technology concept can help the military perform its mission better.
Goal of Technology Concept Submission
It is also important to realize that the purpose of the Technology Concept Submission is not to promote a proprietary solution. In fact, no proprietary information can be contained in the Technology Concept Submission at all. This submission will not be kept confidential. Any information you put in the submission will be available to other members of the RTC.
The purpose of the Technology Concept Submission is to address a mission need of the military, and to show how a new technology could improve the military's mission performance in specific capability areas. The result of a successful Technology Concept Submission will be a JGRE RFP issued to the RTC that specifies the need to be met, not the specific technology for meeting it. Any and all members of the RTC can submit proposals in response to the RFP. The JGRE will select the proposal that provides the best value to the government and is most likely to meet the need identified in the RFP.
How Technology Concept Submissions Are Evaluated
Successful submissions will be technology concepts that satisfy multiple capabilities. The more generally useful and widely applicable a technology concept is, the higher it will be rated. Military users do not want to carry lots of unique tools for specific jobs. They want a few really great tools that do many jobs. The more JCA subcategories that can be (honestly) checked off as benefitting from the technology concept, then the stronger the submission.
Submissions will also be judged on how critical the technology concept would be in improving the mission performance in the indicated capability areas. Please note that it is not the criticality of the mission that is being evaluated, but rather how important the technology would be in making the JCA capability stronger. The government evaluators will look at the submission and ask, "How will this technology make me better off than I am today?"
The technology concepts must also be very specific to ground robotics. JGRE has limited resources and cannot fund all the good robotics ideas. There is definitely not enough funding within JGRE to spend resources on general applications technology. There are other funding mechanisms for that work.
JGRE is limited by its role to funding development for concepts that are between TRL 3 and TRL 6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Readiness_Level
Development work that has not yet reached TRL 3 is funded through other mechanisms. After TRL 7 is reached, funding for further development must transition to one of the Services' Programs of Record.
A Technology Concept Submission will be evaluated higher if its technology can reach TRL 6 within three years. Because the purpose of JGRE funding is research and development, the end result of any contractual work can only be a prototype. JGRE funding cannot be used for System Design & Development (SDD), procurement, or operations and maintenance.
All Technology Concept Submissions must include a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimate of costs. In general, project awards run the range from less than one million dollars to several million dollars. Given the total level of JGRE funding in any one year, and the number of good projects to fund, it would be rare that a project that costs over $10 million would be funded.
Presenting Ideas to the TAB
During the week of May 19, the TAB will review all of the RTC Technology Concept Submissions. This review will take place on a single day, probably Wednesday, May 21. Submitters will have the option of discussing their submission with the TAB for five minutes. This interaction is intended to be a back and forth discussion, rather than a PowerPoint-style presentation.
The only presentation tool that can be used are hardcopies of a one page hand-out. No projected images, video, or flipcharts can be used. Submitters should expect to answer questions about how their technology concept applies to the capability areas that they checked off, as well as discuss what substantiates their estimate of TRL, criticality, and ROM cost.
Submitters can travel to
It is not necessary for the submitter to discuss the technology concept with the TAB. All submissions will be evaluated, whether or not the submitter chooses to talk with the TAB in person or on the telephone.
TAB Evaluation, RPF, and Award
Following the TAB meetings during the week of May 19, JGRE will meet separately and determine which technology concepts should be used as the basis for any RFP’s to be issued to the RTC. All such RFP's will be subject to open and fair competition amongst the members of the RTC.
The proposals that members submit will be considered propriety and will be safeguarded. Any award will be handled as a separate task order within the overall contract that the government has with the RTC.
Further Information
To ask questions and get further information, the RTC will create and publicize a Question & Answer web page, where all of the members' questions will be posted, along with answers from the RTC and/or government, as appropriate.
