Notice

Competition document: agile, immersive mission training

Published 12 June 2015

1. Agile, immersive mission training

The Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) presents this SBRI themed competition in association with UKDSC, as part of the Defence Growth Partnership (DGP) Innovation Challenge.

Centre for Defence Enterprise themed competitions with the UK Defence Solutions Centre

We’re seeking proposals for techniques and solutions aimed at providing more cost-effective and timely military training capabilities.

This competition was briefed at the CDE Innovation Network event with the UK Defence Solutions Centre (UKDSC) on 8 July 2015 in London and at a webinar on 15 July 2015.

Proposals must be submitted by 5pm on Tuesday 4 August 2015. Submit your proposal using the CDE online portal.

2. Background

Our armed forces rely on effective training to conduct successful operations. This requires a wide spectrum of training that can be delivered to both regular and reserve forces in a common and consistent manner. This includes basic, individual training through to team and joint collective training for UK units, and increasingly combined training with coalition partner nations.

An important enabler is the provision of agile, re-configurable, and immersive simulation-based training, which can be readily available in response to changing operational needs.

Also, to understand an individual’s competence to perform a task or mission, we need a record of their training and performance against the training objectives.

3. Technology challenges

Solutions to these challenges must provide component or sub-system benefit, and must be capable of being integrated with both existing and future training systems to offer a more comprehensive training capability for defence missions.

3.1 Challenge 1: in-action review of trainee performance

When undertaking mission training, we require a method that allows instructors to continuously and automatically understand if individuals are meeting their training objectives from team or joint collective events. A system that provides this level of analysis coupled with a comprehensive, easy to use, visualisation tool to understand individual performance is also critical. This would reduce instructor cognitive load and provide trainees with accurate information on their performance of tasks and maintenance of competencies. An example of this could be a feedback loop that evolves and responds to the trainee’s performance, keeping the trainee in a carefully maintained optimum training zone. You need to think about both the human and technology perspectives in your proposal.

Although the focus of this challenge is the in-action review during training, the real-time feedback data will also be useful to the instructor for their review of performance after the training is completed. This data could also be used as a method of tracking a trainee’s performance against a given set of objectives.

In the long term, a system will be required that will track individual training and mission-specific collective training exercises so that instructors can monitor the achievement of training objectives across a number of unrelated training events.

This CDE themed competition seeks novel techniques, frameworks, processes and methods to track an individual’s training needs and capture, analyse and visualise a trainee’s personal performance and achievement of objectives. Innovative solutions should describe how they will interface with external systems and how data will be analysed and visualised to present clear and easy-to-understand records of a trainee’s achievements.

This CDE themed competition seeks solutions that:

• allow the input of training needs
• provide real-time data capture for near real-time analysis
• provide a visual representation of a trainee’s performance and achievement against a set of objectives
• record and monitor the achievement of training needs across different training events and types of training media

Solutions should consider the following:

• individual, team and larger-scale group training
• training as part of a coalition
• training across different disciplines, eg chemical, biological and radiological,cyber, electronic warfare and intelligence

The solutions that are developed will need to be rapidly configurable and be fully exportable from the UK into overseas markets. We’re looking for solutions that are flexible and suitable for both regular and reserve force training while supporting deployed training with coalitions and overseas forces.

Successful proposals will be required to articulate how a body of evidence to support the research findings can be provided and/or provide a proof-of-concept demonstration at the end of phase 1.

3.2 Challenge 2: sensory immersion (cognitive fidelity and training effectiveness)

Effective mission training relies on immersing trainees within a situation that’s as close to the pressures they would face on operations. The ability to subject a trainee to the physical conditions and cognitive workload similar to operations should further enhance training effectiveness. This could be achieved through synthetic augmentation and/or sensory stimulation.

We’re looking for technologies and techniques that can be used to generate a more seamless ‘boundary’ between live and synthetic training. As part of this, we want to achieve low-cost, quick-to-configure technologies that increase the level of visual and sensory immersion provided to trainees.

The scope of this increased sensory and visual stimulation is broad and covers the full spectrum of training for military operations across air, land and sea. We’re seeking novel methods of synthetic augmentation, re-useable virtual reality and virtual augmentation techniques for military training. We want to introduce the use of more representative haptic feedback and aural stimulation into traditional training environments to increase the level of immersion that a trainee experiences.

Systems that achieve the training objectives without being specific to training environments are particularly welcomed, for example, using unrelated games to develop competencies.

We’re looking for this to lead the identification and development of low-cost wearable devices that are able to stimulate a trainee’s senses and increase the level of immersion that a trainee experiences.

The military already uses and understands gaming technologies in its current training programmes. We now want to investigate if online virtual worlds can be integrated into the training cycle to increase the effectiveness of an individual’s training regime.

Therefore we want:

• low-cost virtual reality and synthetic augmentation devices and systems that can be used in individual and collective training
• proof-of-concept demonstrations of technologies that can be rapidly re-purposed or developed to provide immediate benefits in visual and sensory immersion

4. What we want

Your proposal must include:

• a proof-of-concept demonstration and a fully costed proposal for phase 2 as deliverables of phase 1
• solutions that will lead to innovative or disruptive capabilities
• consideration of systems and implementation issues
• solutions with defined, open, interfaces to allow integration with other components
• recommendations and proposals for further development

We’ll consider research proposals for the defence application of technologies that are mature in other sectors. These proposals must be research focused and include a significant proportion of work that is clearly within the research and pre-commercial development space of the innovation life cycle, at less than technology readiness level (TRL) 6. The diagram below shows the technology innovation life cycle, how this maps with TRLs and where this CDE competition fits in. For a description of TRLs access MOD’s Acquisition System Guidance.

All phase-1 projects must complete by no later than 31 March 2016 (but can complete earlier). This is so that they deliver in time to present at a marketplace event during April 2016 and for entry into the phase-2 competition.

5. What we don’t want

Under this CDE themed competition we’re not looking for:

• paper-based studies
• marginal improvements in capability
• solutions that offer no significant defence and security benefit
• technology watch or horizon scanning
• roadmaps or technology prediction
• demonstrations of existing technology products used in a traditional way

6. Exploitation

This CDE themed competition is split into 2 phases:

1. Phase-1 projects will be up to 6 months in duration and seek technologies at a component level. Up to £1 million will be made available for phase 1 and funding will be considered on a per-project basis. We anticipate that a number of phase-1 projects will be funded from a range of suppliers. Phase-1 projects should produce outputs within the pre-commercial development, solution exploration stage of the innovation life cycle at least at TRL 3 to 4.

2. Following assessment and down-selection of the phase-2 proposals a number of successful phase-1 projects may be taken forward with a second stage of investment. This will be for a further 6 to 8 months and outputs are anticipated to be within the pre-commercial procurement, prototype development stage of the innovation life cycle, at around TRL 5 to 6. The aim of phase-2 projects will be to integrate several phase-1 outputs into systems that can be demonstrated in a realistic environment. Successful bidders may therefore be expected to collaborate to deliver phase-2 objectives. At least £1.25 million will be made available for this second phase and funding will be considered on a per-project basis.

Phase-1 projects producing a successful output may be offered accelerated development through the commercialisation phase by UKDSC to enhance the potential for exploitation.

7. Important information

This competition will be supported by presentations given at the Innovation Network event on Wednesday 8 July 2015.

Proposals for funding must be submitted by 5pm on Tuesday 4 August 2015 using the CDE online portal.

Please mark all proposals for this themed competition with ‘mission training’ plus challenge 1 and/or 2 as appropriate as a prefix in your title. You can submit a single proposal offering a solution to meet both challenges.

Read important information on what all CDE proposals must include.

There is no cap on the value of proposals, however it’s more likely that at phase 1 a larger number of lower-value proposals (up to £100,000) will be funded. At phase 2, it’s likely that a small number of the successful phase-1 proposals will be funded to a higher value.

Successful proposals will be 100% funded.

Suppliers should note that Dstl won’t provide data sets to support the development, testing or refinement of proposed projects. Suppliers must either supply their own or use relevant third-party data sets to demonstrate how their proposals are relevant.

Proposals will be assessed by subject matter experts from UKDSC (working under a non-disclosure agreement), MOD and Dstl using the MOD Performance Assessment Framework (PAF).

Collaboration often strengthens a proposal so we welcome joint proposals from academia or small and medium-sized enterprises and larger companies. One of the collaborators must act as the lead so that MOD can contract with a single entity.

Each project will be assigned a technical partner in Dstl who’ll provide the interface between the project and the defence and security community and will assist in developing potential routes to exploitation within this community as appropriate. Subject matter experts from UKDSC will be available to companies throughout phases 1 and 2 of the competition to maximize the opportunity for exploitation of projects.

Deliverables from contracts will be made available to Dstl technical partners and are subject to review by UK MOD. UKDSC won’t automatically have rights of use of the deliverables, but each funded proposer will have the opportunity to engage with UKDSC to enhance the likelihood of exploitation of their technology. This is likely to take the form of confidential face-to-face meetings and marketplace-style events to provide an opportunity for successful proposers to demonstrate capability to MOD, UKDSC, and UK and international defence customers.

7.1 Ethical considerations

All research involving human participation conducted or sponsored by MOD is subject to ethical review under MOD procedures, irrespective of any separate ethical procedures (eg from universities or other organisations). This ensures that acceptable ethical standards are met, upheld and recorded, and advocates adherence to national and internationally accepted principles and guidance. As a result, some of the proposals may require full ethical approval, involving existing MOD processes and procedures. The following definitions explain the areas of research that require approval:

• clinical: conducting research on a human participant, including (but not limited to) administering substances, taking blood or urine samples, removing biological tissue, radiological investigations, or obtaining responses to an imposed stress or experimental situation

• non-clinical: conducting research to collect data on an identifiable individual’s behaviour, either directly or indirectly (such as by questionnaire or observation)

All proposals should declare if there are potential ethical issues.

If you think that your proposal may require ethics approval, please ensure that you adopt a phased approach in your submission as follows:

• milestone 1: gaining ethics approval for the project, including delivery of the research protocols (the protocol will need to be detailed by completing the ethics application form

• milestone 2: proposed research that will be carried out subject to gaining ethics approval (optional phases to be formally invoked, where appropriate)

A break point should be included after milestone 1.

Read more on the MOD Research Ethics Committees.

The requirement for ethical approval isn’t a barrier to funding: proposals are assessed on technical merit and potential for exploitation. Successful bids will be supported through the ethical review process, however, an outline of the research methods in the bid are encouraged to help this process.

8. Key dates

8 July 2015	Competition briefing at Innovation Network event
15 July 2015	Webinar
4 August 2015	Competition closes at 5pm
End of September 2015	Contract placement initiated and feedback provided
31 March 2016	Latest date for the delivery of phase-1 proof-of-concept research
April 2016	Marketplace event
April 2016	Phase-2 funding decisions made

9. Queries and help

While you’re preparing your proposals, you can contact us if you have any queries: cde@dstl.gov.uk

Capacity to answer these queries is limited in terms of volume and scope. Queries should be limited to a few simple questions or if provided with a short (few paragraphs) description of your proposal, the technical team will provide, without commitment or prejudice, broad yes/no answers. This query facility is not to be used for extensive technical discussions, detailed review of proposals or supporting the iterative development of ideas. While all reasonable efforts will be made to answer queries, CDE and Dstl reserves the right to impose management controls when higher than average volumes of queries or resource demands restrict fair access to all potential proposal submitters.