11th May 2023
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), in partnership with the Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl), is delighted to launch a new Themed Competition called, ‘Humans in Systems: Accelerating Interaction Innovation’. This competition seeks innovations in Human Machine Interaction (HMI) and interface technologies and approaches to support improvements in human machine interaction and to support computer mediated teamwork and collaboration (across both human to human, and human to machine teams).
Key dates and funding
- Up to £1 million funding is available for this Themed Competition. This call is looking to fund several individual proposals across all three Challenge Areas.
- The deadline to submit a proposal is midday (BST) on 19 July 2023.
- A Q&A webinar to discuss the competition requirements will take place on 24 May 2023.
Influencing the future of the Operating Environment
The Future Operating Environment is likely to be highly complex and challenging. Rapid technological change, especially in AI, is reshaping societies, enhancing capability and transforming the character of warfare, for the UK and our allies, as well as our adversaries. The roles, tasks and activities undertaken by defence personnel are also likely to evolve and adapt. UK Defence is committed to adopt Generation After Next technologies in a way that is ambitious, safe and responsible.
To maintain operational capability and task effectiveness, it is essential the interface between humans and machines is optimised for future capabilities, platforms, and systems. Interfaces must be efficient to interact with, providing assistance and facilitation wherever possible, to ensure humans’ maintain meaningful system relationships, that humans maintain the necessary situation awareness, with speed and agility to deliver task performance at optimal levels.
Do you have the solution? Submit a proposal now
What innovations are DASA looking for?
This competition seeks proposals that enhance innovations in Human Machine Interaction (HMI); and interface technologies and approaches to support teamwork and collaboration. DASA is looking for novel and innovative ideas to benefit end-users working across some or all of the Defence domains (Maritime, Land, Cyber, Space or Air). Defence wants to accelerate and de-risk the requirement specification and development of HMI technologies for future defence capabilities.
This competition seeks proposals under three challenge areas, all are of equal importance.
Challenge 1: HMI innovations within the constrained space environment
This challenge seeks to enhance the interaction between people and systems within physically constrained and environmentally challenging environments. This might include: the provision of and interaction with large quantities of information and the control or interaction with un-crewed semi-autonomous or remotely controlled platforms and sensor systems from within another vehicle.
Challenge 2: AI assistive task support, AI enabled decision support tools, and novel interface modalities
This challenge seeks to unlock task performance improvements through the provision of novel interface technologies and interaction approaches and tools to support users in areas such as: control inputs, improving situational awareness, interacting with information, making decisions.
Challenge 3: Enhancing Teamwork and Collaboration
This areas is focused on tools which may benefit both co-located and distributed teams engaged in collaborative and co-operative working. Often teams operate within constrained systems, architectures, and workstations; where the introduction and implementation of new team aids is prohibitive.
Do you have a disruptive idea or concept? Read the full competition document and submit a proposal.
Q&A Webinar
We are hosting a dial-in session on the 24 May 2023 to provide further detail on the competition and a chance to ask questions in an open forum.
To register for the webinar please click here.