Computer Vision Capabilities Solicitation

Application Close Date: June 30, 2024

Application Portal: CENTCOM Desert Sentry (Computer Vision) | Opportunities | Tradewinds (tradewindai.com)

DESERT SENTRY

Computer Vision Defense Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) General Solicitation Demonstrations of Innovative Commercial Technologies

Implemented by Class Deviation 2022-O0007

INNOVATIVE COMMERICIAL DEMONSTRATION SUMMARY

Computer Vision

The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is seeking demonstrations for commercial platforms to enable DoD personnel to rapidly create and maintain computer vision (CV) capabilities.?? Intended applications include automated detection and identification of features in imagery and video collected by spaceborne, airborne, and land/sea-based sensors.?

Desired solutions will support the following supervised learning functions:

• #IMAGERY/VIDEO #INGEST – The capability must support manual and batch ingest of data from local or cloud data stores, inclusive of pertinent domain metadata (e.g., collection timestamp, #sensor details, image processing details, #geotags, content tags, synthetic content tags, etc).
• BATCH #DATA PREPARATION – Example functions include spatially-subdividing large images or temporally-subdividing videos for labelling purposes.
• LABELED DATA SET INGEST – The capability must support ingesting existing labeled #data sets, provided they conform to common labeled data set standards (e.g., #COCO).
• CV TASK AND #ONTOLOGY GENERATION – CV tasks include classification, as well as single- and multi-class object detection and instance segmentation for imagery and video.
• LABELING – The capability must manage distributed workforce labeling and secondary quality reviews.? An optional, yet highly desirable, feature is incorporation of novel methods to enhance labeling efficiency.? Examples include pre-labeling (i.e., machine-generated labels) and machine-assisted labeling (e.g., human-generated point automatically converted to polygon).
• AUTOMATED LABEL AUGMENTATION – The capability must boost the size of a labeled dataset through intelligent batch transformations thereof (e.g., mitigate class imbalance).
• AUTOMATED MODEL #TRAINING – Model training must flexibly utilize cloud or on-prem GPU compute resources.
• AUTOMATED MODEL SCORING – Performance scoring must be based on industry standard CV metrics (e.g., F1, precision, recall), contrasting findings from test and validation (i.e., withheld from training) sets.
• MODEL CONTAINERIZATION – The capability must export a containerized model, inclusive of the model network, weights, and supporting metadata for traceable provenance.? The containerized model must be fully viable as an air-gapped capability, with zero external system dependencies.

In addition to interacting with the above functions via a consolidated web UI, programmatic interaction via open Application Programming Interfaces is also required. As such, there are two target user demographics.?

1.?????? Respectively, the primary user demographic consists of DoD analysts and operators with mission-related subject matter expertise (i.e., not traditional CV developers), warranting an intuitive, streamlined UI/UX.? This enables scale while bolstering user adoption.? ?

2.?????? Data scientists and infrastructure engineers will have a role in deploying, maintaining, and ensuring interoperability of the CV platform as part of a larger digital enterprise, to include cloud-based and on-premises networks.

The goal for this effort is to enable DoD warfighters to create performant CV models in 7 days or less via an integrated, self-service platform.? If successful, this process will complement existing CV development programs of record focused on model performance optimization.

#Counter #UAS

The #cUAS section is under development and will be updated in the coming months.

In this context, “innovative” is defined as any commercial product, technology, service, and/or any application of an existing commercial product, technology or service that have the potential to fulfill requirements, close capability gaps, or provide potential technological advancements for the Department of Defense. This may include any novel process, practice, methodology, or application of the preceding items to a new mission domain.

Under a CSO, DoD may competitively select solutions received in response to a general solicitation, similar to a broad agency announcement. Use of a CSO in accordance with this Class Deviation 2022- O0007 is considered to be a competitive procedure for the purposes of 10 U.S.C. chapter 221 and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.102. As a result of the competitive processes used under this CSO Announcement, multiple awards of various demonstrations may be executed. Awards executed from this CSO competitive process may include, but are not limited to, a FAR based contract and/or an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA).

Under the authority of 10 U.S.C. 4022, the CDAO may desire to award an other transaction agreement to carry out prototype project(s) that are directly relevant to enhancing the mission effectiveness. This general solicitation satisfies the requirement to compete to the maximum extent practicable pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 4022(b). As such, responses to this general solicitation have the potential for follow-on other transactions in accordance with 10.U.S.C. 4022(f).

?SUBMISSION PERIOD

Responses to this CSO will be accepted by the Government beginning 1 June 2024 through 30 June 2024 at 1700 Eastern Time. This general solicitation will be periodically reviewed, updated, and amended to allow for new solutions to be evaluated based on CENTCOM’s mission needs.

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If your company is interested in these lines of effort and does not submit to this period, please ensure to follow the posting so that your company receive updates when either cUAS or CV opportunities open back up.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The CDAO and its partners intend to accept and review responses to this announcement periodically for inclusion in the Digital Falcon Oasis exercises.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROPOSAL SUBMISSION

Interested solution providers are required to submit a three-page Discovery Paper using the TradewindAI platform via the below link. Interested solution provides are required to complete the registration page at the link provided and upload your Discovery Paper as instructed on the website. The registration page includes a Discovery Paper template with additional instructions to complete and submit the Discovery Paper. Interested solution providers must use the Discovery Paper template provided on the Tradewindai.com registration page.

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*All Round 1-3 dates are tentative, with the intent that performance is during the last two weeks of September

Round 1 – Discovery (1-30 Jun 2024).

If you have a solution that addresses the problem description, we would love to hear about it! Submit a brief discovery paper for us to assess. CENTCOM and select subject matter experts may invite those that have the highest potential to solving the problem to Round 2.?

WHAT DO I SUBMIT IN ROUND 1?? ? ? ?

Submit a three-page Discovery Paper by the deadline answering the following questions and instructions. The discovery paper should be clear yet concise with relevant and convincing arguments to support your solution. We will not dictate format, but ask you answer the questions in the order provided.

·???????? PROBLEM ALIGNMENT: Provide a description of your solution and how your solution aligned to address the published problem(s)??

·???????? VALUE PROPOSITION: Why is your solution the best approach from a technical, business, or operational perspective?

·???????? OPERATIONAL IMPACT: How will your solution improve the jobs or lives of CENTCOM Operators who will be impacted by your solution? (Be specific!)

Round 2 - Pitch Round (5-16 Aug 2024)

This is your chance to pitch your best proof of concept to a Government panel. Participants will have 15 minutes to present and 30 minutes for questions from the panel. Questions will be relevant to the information provided in the pitch and may differ among presenters. There is no formal agenda or schedule to the pitch outside of the time constraint. The Presenter has complete control over the structure and format of the 15-minute pitch and is encouraged to focus on the proposed solution’s technical efficacy and value proposition to the Government. Pitches should be able to be understood by a technical and non-technical panel audience. Any organizational descriptions and introductory company remarks should be kept to a bare minimum or not at all. It is highly critical that the presenter demonstrate it understands the capability gap, how the proof of concept will solve the problem, and how it can be deployed to DoD networks in a secure fashion. If invited to this phase, additional logistical information (i.e. time and date) will be provided separately from this Call to Industry. The Government will assess solutions for technical merit using the rubric in Appendix 001.

Round 3 - Project Award (16 Sep – 4 Oct 2024)

The Government reserves the right to make one, some, or no pilot project awards based on the results of any Round. Successfully negotiated awards are intended to be Other Transaction Agreements under 10 USC 4022. An award under 10 USC 4022 may result in a subsequent award of a follow-on production agreement without additional competition based on successful prototype completion. Performance under this announcement will include a one-week, onsite exercise that will test the solution within an operational environment. It is the intent of the Government to provide non-monetary compensation for these agreements. Compensation will be in the form of a report and/or feedback on the solution and how to improve for future operations or exercises. All Round 3 Project Awards also have the potential to move forward into an operational environment with a funded production contract for integration onto CENTCOM-determined network and one-year of license access to platform.

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In the event that no Round 3 Projects are selected for funded production contracts, the CSO affords subsequent opportunity for further consideration.?

What can I expect during Round 3 performance?

The Government intends to provide 2-3 Government personnel to utilize, evaluate, and review the vendor’s platform during the one-week exercise. The Government personnel will be subject matter experts for a particular functional area (e.g., maritime security), accompanied by a hard drive of related, unlabeled data for use during the exercise.? Vendors will be asked to be in-person for the duration of the one-week exercise, where the days consist of the following:

Day 1 – Training: Vendors will provide web-based platform access credentials and train 2-3 Government personnel on platform use

Days 2-4 - Collaborative Build: 2-3 Government personnel will build at least one model using their provided data.? Exercise success will be heavily based on the degree to which Government teams are self-sufficient using the platform; however, the Vendor’s onsite representative is intended to facilitate the team’s successful application of the platform.

Day 5 – Evaluation:? commensurate emphasis on model performance and user experience

The end deliverable from the week should be a containerized model and an installation guide, subject to validation by the CENTCOM team for a period of two weeks (i.e., evaluation purposes only).

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QUESTIONS

Questions regarding this Announcement should be sent to [email protected].

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NOTICES

Use of Contractor Support

Non-Government, subject matter expert (SME) evaluators (also called “judges”) may be used to support this CSO. Such evaluators will be operating at the direction of the Government and through signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). The Government understands that information provided in response to this general solicitation is presented in confidence and it agrees to protect such information from unauthorized disclosure to extent required by law. Your participation in any round of assessment under this Open Call indicates concurrence with the use of Non-Government SME judges.

Demonstration or Requirement Conflicts

As stated in this announcement, the Government intends to utilize this CSO for the possible award of FAR procurements or OT agreements. Entities will be responsible for understanding and mitigating organizational conflicts of interests, in accordance with appropriate statutes and regulations (e.g., FAR Subpart 9.5).

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APPENDIX 001: EVALUATION RUBRIC

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Deliver a clear, concise description of what your innovation does or will do, and how it will impact the DoD

PROBLEM YOU SOLVE

?Deliver a clear and concise description of the problem you are attempting to address with your technology or service

SOLUTION DESCRIPTION

Deliver a clear and concise description of your solution relative to the problem you've just described

OPERATIONAL DEMAND

OPERATIONAL IMPACT

Looking only at the DoD personnel who will be impacted by your solution, argue that their mission or effectiveness will be significantly improved if your solution is adopted. What is the impact of your solution versus today's solution in the context of a single individual's work role and responsibilities

POTENTIAL SCALE OF IMPACT

Look into the future to a time when your solution is both technically mature and fully “transitioned” (actively in use by DoD). Describe the scale of your impact within the context of the DoD.

END-USER PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION

Every problem can be addressed multiple ways. Why is your proposed solution the best choice for the DoD's end users?

WARFIGHTER DEMAND

Here you are pitching to the warfighter directly. Why would a warfighter judge want to adopt your solution? To the extent that you can, make the case that soldiers - once they experience your solutions - will “pull” it into the Army by asking for it themselves.

TECHNICAL DEMAND

TECHNICAL IMPACT

What is the impact of your solution versus today's solution in the overall technical environment into which this solution would be deployed? How does this innovation make the larger system in which it would operate better from an engineering perspective?

POTENTIAL SCALE OF IMPACT

Look into the future to a time when your solution is both technically mature and fully “transitioned” (actively in use by DoD). Describe the scale of your impact within the context of the DoD.

ALTERNATIVE TECHNICAL APPROACHES

Why is your approach the best from a technical perspective? If you can convincingly refute alternative means to solving this problem, please briefly do so.

TECHNOLOGIST DEMAND

Here, you are pitching to the DoD technical subject matter expert experts directly. Why would a DoD technologists want to adopt your solution”

PROPOSAL QUALITY

QUALITY OF PROSE

Prove you write clearly. Prove you right convincingly.

DATA QUALITY & ATTRIBUTION

Support your arguments with relevant, properly attributed data to enhance your credibility.