Advanced off-road autonomous robotics company awarded DTRA contract to integrate chemical and biological warning and reporting, hazard prediction, and risk assessment software

Neya Systems, a division of Applied Research Associates, today announced it has been awarded a contract with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the U.S. Department of Defense to create a Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) plugin to coordinate and deploy unmanned, robotic platforms with Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) sensors. The $1 million contract calls for the integration of Neya Systems’ Mission Planning and Management System (MPMS) as a TAK-enabled tool that allows operators to coordinate and task a large array of manned and unmanned systems for performing CBRN missions. DTRA aims to leverage this TAK plugin for enhanced CBRN situational awareness to protect military and civilian populations from intentional or incidental chemical or biological threats.

“MPMS is an end-to-end solution for operations with multiple assets, in domains such as DOD, mining, warehousing, and agriculture,” said Mike Formica, division manager of Neya Systems. “With over $10 million in direct DOD funding to date, MPMS has successfully controlled and coordinated a wide variety of robotic assets including UGVs and UAVs, such as the Raven UAS, MTRS UGV, and KMAX helicopter.”

This new MPMS-TAK plugin will incorporate a library of known CBRN procedural templates for locating, surveying, and monitoring threats. This will leverage MPMS’s onboard suite of algorithms to auto-assign autonomous platforms to execute CBRN missions. MPMS will receive and disseminate sensor readings from each robotic platform to adjacent TAK plugins, which will then perform hazardous agent release calculations.

Testing and validation of the MPMS-TAK plugin will use simulated robotic assets through VISE, Neya Systems’ Virtual Integration and Simulation Environment. Based on Unreal Engine, VISE leverages several open-source simulation and communication software packages providing the ability to deploy highly customizable vehicles and sensors into complex environments.

The program is scheduled to run until May 2022.

ABOUT NEYA SYSTEMS
Neya Systems is a leader in advanced off-road autonomy and high-level multi-robot mission planning. Neya provides innovative solutions to customers in the defense, mining, construction, and security industries. Neya’s full-stack autonomy includes capabilities in low-level control, perception, safeguarded teleoperation, full autonomy, and multi-agent mission planning. To learn more, visit neyarobotics.com.

ABOUT ARA
Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) was founded in 1979, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to offer science and engineering research to solve problems of national importance. ARA delivers leading-edge products and solutions for national defense, energy, homeland security, aerospace, healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing. With over 1,500 employee-owners at locations in the U.S. and Canada, ARA offers a broad range of technical expertise in defense technologies, civil engineering, computer software and simulation, systems analysis, biomedical engineering, environmental technologies, and blast testing and measurement.