Communities of Interest

Task Requests are projects which are deemed to be of common benefit to both industry and Government. These projects are awarded to the NAMC as prime contractor and include multiple NAMC members as subcontractors through the course of the project. Task Requests may organize a Community of Interest (COI), a subset of NAMC members who provide feedback, participate in discussions, and monitor the progress of the project on a voluntary basis.

Current COIs include the Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) COI and the Vehicle Protection Systems (VPS) COI (formerly the MAF COI).  If you are interested in participating in either of these COIs, please review the details on how to join in each section below.

The RAS COI is an umbrella COI for the Robotic Operating System (ROS), unique to military requirements (ROS-M), Common Controller Architecture (CCA), and Interoperability Profiles (IOP) COIs. Due to the significant commonality and intersection of interests among these three initiatives, the Government and NAMC have decided to organize and maintain one common RAS COI to enable members to readily access cross-referenced information.  Government employees or NAMC members in good standing that are interested in actively participating in one or more of the working groups, please click on the button below to apply.

All documents related to the RAS COI, including IOP, are housed on our external NAMC Groups website found here: https://namcgroups.org.  You must be an approved COI member in order to access these documents.

Robotic Operating System - Military (ROS-M)

NAMC has entered into a task request with the Government to develop a prototype variant of the ROS-M. ROS-M will be based on the same ROS‌-2 suite of security-enhanced, core messaging and interface formats, libraries, and software development tools used by the general ROS community. As a result, the ROS-M ecosystem will be able to incorporate generic robotics software routines developed by ROS developers that are suitable for defense-related RAS. ROS-M will also build upon ROS‌-2, by providing the additional tools, standards, and processes needed to develop, test, and document software unique to military applications; and to identify, vet, and provide access to all the software modules and routines resident in the ROS-M domain.

Interoperability Profiles (IOP)

IOP is a collaborative effort with the Government to develop, support, enhance, and extend IOP standardized baseline instantiations (SBIs) jointly developed by the RAS COI and the Government for certain classes and types of ground RAS.
 

Common Controller Architecture (CCA)

CCA is a collaborative effort with the Government to develop an interoperable open software architecture for a common controller capable of operating various, heterogeneous tactical air and ground RAS. Implementing such an interoperable open architecture (IOA) will enable software components running on one or more common controllers, including those developed by different providers at different times, to seamlessly provide services to and accept services from one another, and in so doing enable them to effectively operate together. This effort is synchronous with a requirement in the Army Common Robotic System – Individual (“CRS(I)”) program of record (PoR) for an operator control unit “able to achieve & maintain active and/or passive control of any current Army and Marine Corps PoR battalion & below level Unmanned (Air or Ground) System and/or their respective payloads.”

The VPS COI (formerly the MAF COI) is an industry-wide forum consisting of approved, participating NAMC members who are working to develop MAF open architecture virtual model prototypes. The industry forum follows an "adopt-adapt-author" methodology in the effort to move towards establishing a set of common open architectures for use within the vehicle and mission system communities. These prototype virtual model architectures will be independent of specific hardware, software or firmware solutions and will be used to evaluate the feasibility of the MAF concept.

If you are interested in participating in the VPS COI, please click on the button below to fill out an application form. A brief, one to two page white paper specifying your interest and qualifications related to MAPS is a required attachment.

OBJECTIVE

• Develop the USG baseline architecture by enhancing PEO GCS Common Infrastructure Architecture (GCIA) based on Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) to guide the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) system development.
• The effort is directed by the Army Acquisition Executive to achieve transformational capabilities for OMFV via Modular, Open and Scalable Architecture, and by using applicable open standards.
• The effort will be executed by the Government, with input from industry and academia. The output of this MOSA COI will be incorporated the OMFV program and proliferated across the Ground Combat and Tactical Vehicle portfolios. Final architecture decisions will be made by the Government.

PRIMARY GOALS

• Guide the development of MOSA compliant open OMFV system
• A common hardware (AKA vetronics) and software infrastructure
  • Avoid redundant or stove-pipe system development and integrations
  • Avoid non-standard/non-commercial connectors, cables (as appropriate), and wires
  • Enforce sharing resources (e.g., processing) and data across shared network
  • Enforce the use of configurable and manageable switching technologies
    • For handling low-latency constraints and safety-critical functions
• Enable platform upgrades to a more autonomous system
  • To facilitate shared data to the AI based systems and other capabilities
• Avoid costly long-term supply chain lock
• Reduce future integration cost and development effort
• Enable efficient testing and qualification procedures
  • Optimize on validations, qualifications and test (Cost, Schedule and efforts)

If you are interested in joining the MOSA COI, please click the button below for the application and submission instructions.