The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station received a proposed five-year, up to $24 million contract from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to conduct research in establishing a collaborative distributed proving ground that will support autonomous vehicle research across various environments and domains at the George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex on The Texas A&M University System RELLIS Campus.
The Distributed Autonomous Robotic Experiments and Simulations (DARES) research project will be conducted in collaboration with ARL researchers at the Robotics Research Collaboration Campus (R2C2) in Graces Quarters at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
The research will focus on developing virtual proving grounds designed to enable researchers to develop, test and demonstrate artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms for autonomous vehicles.
“We are excited to partner with the Texas A&M System and utilize their state-of-the-art campus, in addition to the lab’s facilities and assets, to take this research to the next level and have them involved in the ARL Distributed Virtual Proving Ground,” said ARL program manager Andrew Ladas. “We look forward to the partnership and enhancing the capabilities of our soldiers in the future operational environment.”
The project, led by Dr. Srikanth Saripalli, includes 20 faculty members from the mechanical, electrical, aerospace and computer science departments at Texas A&M. Among the team members includes Dr. James Hubbard Jr., founder of StarLab, who provided the vision for the project.
“The ability to connect R2C2 with StarLab at the RELLIS Campus through the DARES program enables us to rapidly test and validate autonomous vehicle capabilities at multiple locations simultaneously, which will accelerate the ability to incorporate research results into synthetic environments,” Saripalli said. “This will improve the quality of virtual simulations and ultimately increase resilience in autonomous vehicle capabilities.”
FEATURED RESEARCHERS
Dr. Srikanth Saripalli
- J. Mike Walker ’66 Professor
Dr. James Hubbard Jr.
- Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. ‘45 Chair
- Professor National Academy of Engineering Member