Innovation House is a DARPA
-funded study administered by George Mason University. This Request
for Proposals (RFP) provides a description of the effort, including requirements for participation, details on how
to submit a proposal, project timeline and evaluation criteria.
Please submit questions through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) facility.
The FAQ on this website will be updated throughout the submission period.
Innovation House Project Description
The DARPA Innovation House is a study into the feasibility of effective software design and development in a short-fuse, crucible-style living and working environment. DARPA selected imagery analysis as the topic for the effort. DARPA aims to show that small teams of highly focused, collaborative developers operating under extremely short deadlines can make breakthroughs in automatically obtaining meaning from photos, videos, geospatial data and other imagery-related data.
Proposals are sought describing how teams would design, build and demonstrate a radical, novel software-based research approach to innovation in the general area of extracting meaningful content from large volumes and variety of visual and geospatial media.
Each small team of software developers will meet daily, five days per week, in a workspace in Arlington, Virginia, for an anticipated eight weeks (pending review of deliverables) from September 17, 2012, to November 9, 2012, to explore proposed approaches. Teams will reside in lodging provided by George Mason University near the research site.
Teams will have access to mentors and visitors from academia and multiple U.S. Government agencies, including both military and intelligence communities' specialists.
The study will run over eight weeks, divided into two four-week sessions. In the first session, teams are expected to produce a design and demonstrate initial software capabilities as proofs of concept for their proposed novel approaches. The subsequent investigative session will culminate in the demonstration of capabilities in a functional software configuration.
The primary goal of this study is to test the feasibility of the approach by encouraging teams to explore non-traditional, novel approaches without fear of failure. Because of the high-risk nature of the desired proposal approaches, DARPA recognizes that not every attempt will succeed as envisioned. Failure of the original attempt is acceptable as long as significant learning is demonstrated as to why the radical approach failed, and recommendations are provided for alternative, follow-on approaches that could benefit the imagery analysis community.
This effort does not represent a competition between teams. Every team that demonstrates sufficient progress in the first session will continue into the second session. There is no limit to the capabilities that are needed in understanding large-scale imagery and video data, so all teams can be equally successful.
Except for the requirement to produce software capabilities that obtain understanding from visual, geospatial and imagery-related data, there are no limitations on the applications, products, systems, modules, algorithms or any other software-realizable capabilities that may be proposed. They may run on any electronic systems, including but not limited to computers, tablets and mobile phones.
| Data |
| Awards |
| Team Composition |
| Logistics |
| Deliverables |
Anticipated Timeline
| 10 July 2012 | Call for Proposals | |
| 31 July 2012 |
Proposals must be received by 4PM EDT at George Mason University |
|
| 10 August 2012 | Team selections announced | |
| 17 September 2012 | Teams arrive in Arlington, VA | |
| 12 October 2012 | End of Phase I | |
| 09 November 2012 | End of Phase II |