DARPA Awards $5.1 Million Contract to SwRI

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was formed in 1958 to stop strategic surprise from negatively affecting U.S. national security and create strategic surprise for U.S. adversaries by maintaining the technological superiority of the U.S. military. The agency relies on diverse performers to apply multi-disciplinary approaches to both advance knowledge through basic research to fulfill its mission.

Recently, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI (News - Alert)) announced that the company was given a $5.1 million contract by the DARPA to develop the Context Model Library. This library will be developed as part of the Component, Context and Manufacturing Model Library-2 (C2M2L-2) for the DARPA Adaptive Vehicle Make program.

The work will involve SwRI researchers from three technical divisions; mechanical engineering, automation and data systems and aerospace electronics, systems engineering and training, the company stated in a statement.

“During this one-year effort, SwRI and its subcontractors will develop domain-specific models to enable the design, verification and fabrication of the chassis and survivability subsystems of next-generation infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) designs developed through DARPA’s Fast Adaptable Next-Generation Ground Vehicle (FANG) program,” said Dr. James Walker, an Institute scientist in the Engineering Dynamics Department of SwRI’s Mechanical Engineering Division. “Our researchers have extensive experience with impact and blast modeling and ballistic and blast testing of full-scale vehicles.”

Recently, the company introduced a cooperative research consortium to fasten the development of ROS- Industrial, an open-source extension of ROS concentrating on the requirements of industrial users. ROS, which stands for Robot Operating System, is an open-source project offering a common framework of libraries and tools for various applications, especially for service and research robots. The ROS-Industrial Consortium (RIC) will allow the industrial robotics community to apply the abilities of ROS for industrial applications with the help of a common platform.

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