Notice of Intent to Award Sole Source Contract: Phase 4 and 5 of the Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) Program

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO) on behalf of the Information Innovation Office (I2O), intends to award a Sole Source contract to Raytheon/BBN, SRI, and Leidos for Phases 4 and 5 of the Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) program. The primary goal of the RATS program is to develop the capability to detect relevant speech signals in degraded and corrupted signals in extremely noisy environments. The research under this program, originally solicited under DARPA-BAA-10-34, focuses on the development of algorithms for Speech Activity Detection (SAD), Speaker Identification (SID), Language Identification (SID), and Key Word Spotting (KWS) in field collected signals. Meeting this objective requires algorithms capable of coping with degraded and noisy signals where speech is often barely audible. During the first three phases of the program, a large corpus of signals, simulating field conditions, were generated in a laboratory. These signals were used to train and test the algorithms developed during these phases. The evaluation showed that the algorithms performed extremely well on the laboratory generated signals. During Phases 2 and 3, field signals were collected and annotated. The corpus of field signals was divided so that one part can be used for evaluation and the second for adaptation of the algorithms for these new signals. The performance of the algorithms showed a great degradation in accuracy from the performance on lab data. Adaptation only helped to close the gap between accuracy of the lab signals and field collected signals. As a current performer under phases 1, 2 and 3 of the RATS program, the Raytheon/BBN and SRI teams have developed the RATS software for the various signal analysis algorithms (SAD, SID, LID, and KWS) which in its current configuration provides extremely accurate analysis of laboratory signals and adequate analysis of field signals. Leidos, the current evaluation performer, has tested the algorithms for both laboratory and field collected signals as well as collected and annotated the field signals for evaluation and adaptation of the algorithms to cope with the differences between the laboratory and field signals. In Phases 4 and 5, the objective is to investigate new techniques for adaptation of the algorithms so that they perform well on new, unseen signals not previously available for training, continue to monitor the effectiveness of the adaptation through frequent evaluations, and collect and annotate more field data for the adaptation and evaluation purposes. A second objective is to harden the software so that it is ready for transition and work with transition partners to insert the algorithms into the partners' platforms. The proposed contract action is for supplies or services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate this follow-on effort with only the above mentioned three sources under authority of FAR 6.302-1 "Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." As RATS performers since the conception of the program, Raytheon/BBN, SRI, and Leidos possess unique knowledge, capabilities and intellectual property required to carry out the required research effort at significantly reduced cost and time to the Government. Further, Raytheon/BBN and SRI have successfully demonstrated a Government validated algorithms for signal analysis and Leidos has demonstrated their ability to evaluate the technology as well as their evaluation platform; this makes them uniquely qualified to develop and evaluate the new adaptation techniques in Phases 4 and 5. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals and no solicitation for this specific requirement is currently available. However, parties may indicate their interest and identify their capability to meet the requirement by submitting a white paper and past performance data by no later than September 22, 2014. Submit this information to: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Attn: Mr. Mark Jones, Contracts Management Office (CMO), 675 North Randolph Street, Arlington VA 22203, or via email to contact@example.gov. Questions shall be submitted to the above email address. Responses received within forty-five (45) days after date of publication of this notice will be considered by the Government. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed effort on a full and open basis is solely within the discretion of the Government. It is noted that DARPA's I2O Office maintains an annual Office-Wide Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) seeking revolutionary research in a range of technical areas such as: processing and computational approaches (including, but not limited to, novel algorithm design, natural language processing, and architecture systems) for data sets that may be multimodal, realtime-streamed, or on a scale for which storage is feasible; algorithm development for analysis of dynamic, unlinked and scripted content; and automated language translation and understanding. The "natural language processing" mission thrust area under this BAA specifically seeks proposals for the development and integration of advanced speech signal processing in noisy and degraded environment algorithms. Parties involved in research similar to what is being done under RATS are invited submit against with the Office-Wide BAA, DARPA-BAA-14-39.