NAWCTSD announces automation prize challenge winners at I/ITSEC

By Shane Klestinski, Associate Editor

 

In the final months of 2024, the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD), in collaboration with the Central Florida Tech Grove, held the “NAWCTSD Acquisition Process Improvement Using AI and Machine Learning Prize Challenge.”

 

The winning teams were Hazel AI Tech, Deloitte and Authorium, who earned $50,000, $30,000 and $20,000, respectively.

 

The competition’s problem statement emphasized that a significant degree of variability exists between the time and effort necessary to perform technical evaluations, as well as the quality of the results. The goal of this competition was to expedite the technical evaluation process of proposals for sole source solicitation using artificial intelligence and machine learning, while providing consistent, quality evaluations.

 

“Any entity that submits proposals to develop solutions for [military] training knows that the acquisition process takes a long time; you submit a proposal… and you wait… and you wait…” said Carol Ann Logue, Central Florida Tech Grove director. “The whole point of this challenge – and maybe follow-ons later – was to speed up that initial evaluation of proposals submitted and equip human evaluators with more thorough, objective and consistent information to assess how well [those proposals] meet technical requirements.”

 

Logue emphasized that the challenge did not seek a result that would eliminate human involvement from the process, but to expedite a part of the process that can take roughly two weeks, and reduce it to a matter of hours.

 

The challenge began in September with a virtual information session for interested parties, who registered and submitted proposals in October. Participants received notification that they made it to semifinalist status in early November, and they presented their solutions later that month.

 

The three finalists delivered final presentations for their solutions on Dec. 3, the first day of 2024’s Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, in Orlando, Florida. Contest officials announced the winners of a combined $100,000 in cash prizes, Dec. 4.

 

Logue noted that this NAWCTSD/Tech Grove collaboration served as an example of a prize challenge that provided value to military organizations that focus on training, but the challenge itself was not about training solutions.

 

“The problems and needs our customers bring to us can often be business processes, and [the need to] improve the efficiency and effectiveness of those processes because they ultimately affect the end goal of rapidly getting effective training solutions to the field,” Logue said. “Not everything we do is about an immersive AR or VR solution for something. The pieces of [an organization’s] business process can be just as important.”

 

Tech Grove’s next two prize challenges will involve another Department of Defense (DOD) entity, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), which is the DOD’s environmental and resilience science and technology program. The DOD plans and executes this program through its partnership with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, and that partnership also involves the participation of various other federal and nonfederal organizations.

 

The first of these upcoming SERDP challenges will center on robotic firefighting equipment that is expected to begin near the end of January 2025. The other will focus on virtual reality training for firefighters, which coordinators have tentatively scheduled to begin in late spring/early summer 2025.