Automated Discovery for Design and Control of Turbulent Systems (AutoDIDACTS) Proposers Day

Background
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is sponsoring a Proposers Day webcast to provide information to potential proposers on the objectives of an anticipated Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Automated Discovery for Design and Control of Turbulent Systems (AutoDIDACTS) program.

The goal of this Proposers Day is to introduce the research community, including industry, academia, and government, to the vision and goals of the AutoDIDACTS program, explain the mechanics of a DARPA program, and promote teaming arrangements among organizations with relevant expertise.

Work Details
The AutoDIDACTS program aims to develop and validate new paradigms for rapid design exploration and innovation in aeronautical design and turbulence control problems relevant to the Department of War (DoW).

The program focuses on automated data-informed discovery of universal macroscale principles for design and control of turbulent systems. Key tasks include:
1) Combining expertise in experimental simulators for generating precision ground-truth data;
2) Developing data-informed techniques for discovering predictive principles;
3) Validating approaches during Phase I via benchmarks and comparisons with independent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computations.

Successful teams may progress to challenge problems that include high-endurance MAV design, adaptive control techniques, multi-objective optimization in extreme conditions, and optimal protocols for resilient communications in turbulent conditions.

Period of Performance
The Proposers Day will be held on April 1, 2026. The anticipated release of the AutoDIDACTS BAA is expected in March 2026.

Place of Performance
The Proposers Day will be conducted via webcast.