Special Program Announcement for 2013: Basic Research Challenges in the Science of Autonomy

Office of Naval Research (ONR) basic research programs in autonomy address critical multi-disciplinary fundamental challenges that cut across different scientific and engineering disciplines and system domains (air, see, undersea, and ground systems) with a focus on problems with particular naval relevance. Five new basic research focus areas have been identified and are "Understanding Satisficing in Human, Animal, and Engineered Autonomous Systems for Fast Decision-making with Limited Data," "Cognitively Compatible Semantic and Visual Representation of Autonomous System Perceptual Data for Effective Human/Machine Collaboration," "Mental Simulation as a Unifying Framework for Perception, Cognition and Control in Autonomous Systems and Dexterous Robots," "Structured Machine Learning for Scene Understanding," and "Integrated Autonomy for Long Duration Operations." ONR seeks to initiate 6.1 Basic Research efforts in these five thrusts beginning in Government Fiscal Year 2013.