WASHINGTON – The Army Research Lab and the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) have just wrapped up a critical new test of small ground and air unmanned assets aimed at detecting improvised explosive devices in culverts in subterranean environments, and officials say the experiment represents a new way for the DoD to collaborate with industry on innovative new products.

The "Culvert Denial Challenge" which took place at Ft. Benning, Georgia, from Sept. 29 to Oct. 10, was aimed at denying a potential enemy access to implant improvised explosive devices in road culverts, a particularly nasty problem encountered by NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

The event brought together 20 commercial vendors from industry to show off their wares, and to compete to collaborate with the government on future technology maturation projects.

JIEDDO and the Army have run robotics programs together before in 2011 and 2012, but at the time "we didn't have a contract built around it and so we were delayed somewhat with funding issues," said Matthew Way, a program integrator at JIEDDO.

This time the organization put an IDIQ contract around the event, "and that was a big step for DoD," he said. "DARPA and NASA and other offices that have had the authority to do prizes and competitions do this all the time, but for us to be able to use the current federal acquisition regulations and construct it around [the] challenge we felt was a big success."

Way added that while both the government and industry learned a lot from one another during the event, this is only the beginning of a larger innovation and collaboration program.

"The goal through 2015 is to continue to talk to industry, and we constructed this contract in order to build the mechanism to do that now," he added.

"For us this is really all about improving DoD communications to industry. Instead of just giving them the specifications and what we've come up with — instead of doing that we show them the problem and hopefully that gives them more space to innovate."

When asked about the sometimes prohibitive costs for small tech companies and university labs to send people and equipment to Georgia for days and weeks at a time in order to compete in events like this, Way said that "in 2012, the cost of coming down here and participating may have precluded some folks with small budgets." But this time JIEDDO actually provided funding to pay their expense "so that was one way to try and even the field out and get some smaller [companies] to come out and participate."

Overall, 10 vendors were selected to participate in what was billed as a "surveillance challenge" and another 10 vendors selected for an "inspection challenge."

The surveillance teams offered gear that relied on unmanned systems, micro-radar technologies, seismic sensors and hyperspectral imaging in order to do pattern of life analysis on the areas surrounding the culverts.

The companies that participated were A-T Solutions, L-3 Communications, EFW (Elbit), Advanced Recon Corp, QinetiQ, Niitek, Applied Research Associates, Roboteam, and CyPhy Works.

On the other side, the inspection teams — which actually had to go underground and examine the area — offered solutions that included quadcopters, ground robots, dogs, and electromagnetic sensors. The participants here included Stolar Research, ATSC (Inuktun), iRobot, Lockheed Martin, Pearson Engineering, Science and Engineering Services, QinetiQ, Roboteam, Applied Research Associates, and K2 Solutions.

Recent Israeli experiences with the tunnels that Hamas had constructed from the West bank into Israeli territory have thrown the issue of subterranean operations into sharp relief. The US Army has also put out the call to industry for technologies that would assist in conducting operations in underground bunkers, as well as in dense urban environments that include subway tunnels. ■

Email: pmcleary@defensenews.com.

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