Collaborative Team to Advance Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy

An interdisciplinary research team led by the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and in partnership with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has entered into a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory(ARL) worth up to $68 million. The agreement brings together a large, diverse collaborative of researchers--leveraging the University System of Maryland's national leadership in engineering, robotics, computer science, operations research, modeling and simulation, and cybersecurity--to drive transformational advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy. The five-year agreement will accelerate the development and deployment of safe, effective, and resilient capabilities and technologies, from wearable devices to unmanned aircraft, that work intelligently and in cooperation with each other and with human actors across multiple environments. The robust effort encompasses three areas of research thrusts, each supported by a team of faculty, staff, and students. The new collaboration builds on a more than 25-year research partnership between UMD and ARL in AI, autonomy, and modeling and simulation to spur the development of technologies that reduce human workload and risk in complex environments such as the battlefield and search-and-rescue operations.