 Hello, I'm Tracy Dean from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and this is 2017 year in review. This year, Army scientists and engineers made discoveries, came up with innovative solutions in transition technologies so that American soldiers could gain the decisive edge on the battlefields of the future. Let's take a look at what happened at the laboratory this year. 2017 started out with a visit from Dr. William Roper, Director of the DOD Strategic Capabilities Office and members of his staff, as they came to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, January 10th to see the Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle, or JTAR. Also known as the Hoverbike, the vehicle may one day make it possible for soldiers on the battlefield to order resupply and then receive those supplies rapidly. Also in January, the Defense Science Board visited the laboratory and came away impressed. So the feedback we got was absolutely exceptional. I think overall the Defense Science Board for their study found that the Defense Research Labs are characterized by high quality science, technology transition, as well as acquisition. And from their standpoint, Arrow's Open Campus Initiative, where we're working with academia and industry to develop close collaborations and focus the broader S&T community on challenges associated with the Defense Department and the Army, was an exemplar for the rest of the Defense Department. The lab also sought new partnerships at the Advanced Planning Briefing to Industry, January 31st at APG. The notion here, again, if you think about this from an open campus perspective, it's all about proximity. So anyone who has a passion, desire to want to work on the problem sets that are most interesting to the Army of the future, you can co-locate here. This is a very, very powerful way to just be very close to what's going on and then you can just walk across the campus, use our clean room facilities, use our processing facilities, collaborate with our scientists. In March, the lab hosted its program formulation meeting at the Millette Training Center at APG in hopes of building bridges with stakeholders and gathering feedback to influence the future of Army research. Then acting director, Dr. Philip Percanti, unveiled the nine essential research areas that he said the laboratory must address to support the Army of 2050. I don't think it should be any surprise to anybody really about some of the things that we're considering to be essential research areas. Your help in this is vitally important to really critique what we're doing, what our plans are and where we're going to go together in the future, hopefully, to address these essential research areas. The laboratory also joined forces with industry and universities to develop, design and acquire the next generation of crash test dummies to make soldiers safer. ARL's Joyce Conant filed this report. Keeping soldiers safe is a top priority for vehicle engineers. Army researchers partnered with industry and academia to develop the next generation crash test dummy. Together they designed a new device that will save lives. The mannequin reacts more like a human when an impact or blast comes from underneath the vehicle. Researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center and industry partner DTS commemorated the delivery of four new mannequins in a ceremony July 19. Today's a significant day for Army Research Laboratories and U.S. Army Research Development Engineering Command because we are taking delivery of our first new generation of ATDs which are anthropomorphic test devices, human surrogate test devices that will be used in under blast testing. The Army's next generation crash test dummy has many advantages over past models developed by the automotive industry. Advanced sensors give high resolution data to open new insights into vehicle design. And so within our lab we use these crash test dummies or ATDs to give us a sense of what would actually happen if a person were in an under body blast type event in a simulated lab environment. What we do is evaluate vehicles and vehicle technologies for occupant protection. Following the ceremony the team along with university partners received hands-on training for the new devices all as part of the Warrior Injury Assessment Mannequin or We-A-Man program. The We-A-Man engineering office has done a really phenomenal job of really developing a science and technology initiative and really producing a prototype of a technology that soldiers really need. Officials said the delivery of the new test mannequin wouldn't have been possible without industry partners. So it's been significant for us. We have a history of working in safety research but for this now to expand into the military role and particularly the U.S. military. It's been a significant honor and challenge and it's been very rewarding. The Army hopes to acquire at least 10 fieldable prototypes by next year. The system is going to allow us to really know what's going on inside these vehicles so we can bring our soldiers home safe. In Novi, Michigan, Joyce Conant, ARL TV. In 2017, we saw the culmination of a nearly 10-year effort looking at the future of micro-robotics. ARL's David McNally had this report. Researchers from industry and universities across the nation have rallied around a collaborative technology alliance with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory since 2008. A research program called Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology or MAST came to its conclusion during a capstone event at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Teams of researchers gave 17 live demonstrations of the technologies they've been working on. The University of Pennsylvania showcased a group of autonomous quadcopters that self-organize into formations. Officials said technology has advanced dramatically during the life of the program. I think there's still a long way to go to get them to be able to do all of the behaviors we want and any type of environment that we want. I think there's certain areas that I think we've really pushed the bar and moved the state of the art. And that's in scaling things down to be able to do autonomous behaviors and something that fits in the size of your hand. Bykarski has been with the program since its inception and has managed the alliance of Army, Industry and University researchers since 2012. One way I'm a little sad to see it end and another way I'm really excited because I think we've really pushed the boundaries of the state of the art over the 10 years. When the program started, the laboratory had several objectives. Scientists wanted to understand the fundamental technologies that would enable autonomous micro-robots to work together. So some things I think have matured quite a bit and other things I think we're still scratching the surface on. There's been a lot of discovery and innovation, proof of concept type things. Would be another area where I think you know we've done a lot of innovation and technology development. I am absolutely certain this technology will help the soldiers of the future. We have created advances in, well, everything. I mean there's new platforms, there's new algorithms, there's new sensors. Not all of this will be ready next year or even in the next five years, but we have absolutely advanced technology. We are making an impact right now. Masks started as a five-year research alliance which extended to 10 years and brought together 19 partners from industry and academia. Lead Defense Contractor BAE Systems worked with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Microsystems Integration. The University of Michigan worked on micro-electronics while the University of Maryland focused on microsystem mechanics. The University of Pennsylvania targeted processing for autonomous operations. And now we really need to work with our stakeholders and our partners to take it to the next level, to take the technology and the concepts that we've demonstrated in the program, work those into engineered prototypes that we can actually put in the hands of the soldier and put into the field. The Army recently announced its next focus area for a collaborative technology alliance to be known as Distributed Collaborative Intelligence Systems and Technology or DSIS. It's really about high numbers of systems, heterogeneous in nature. So you think of it as air ground, large, small soldiers in the loop. How do we do distributed intelligence? And then once we have that decision making, how do we get the information back out? Researchers said the next program will not be without challenges. So you have small individual robots and you have instrumented humvees and you have a person and you maybe have tens or hundreds or thousands of any of these things. How do they work together? How do you deal with attrition? How do they talk to each other? How does a fully instrumented humvee talk to a tiny robot talk to a person? This is not a simple problem. This is an incredibly difficult, exciting program. Dr. Brian Sadler, the Army's senior research scientist for intelligent systems, said he is optimistic about the future. The convergence of technology that we're witnessing now and as we propel it forward is going to be a dramatic lifesaver and game changer in terms of the way we operate tactically. We're now seeing a wave of commercialization in this space, but it's going to change the way we do business. In 2017, ARL researchers also received the Secretary of the Army Environmental Award. It does matter, folks. Don't ever think that it doesn't, no matter if you think it's small or large or major or not. In fact, not only have you guys walked away with the Secretary of the Army of recognition, you also won at the Secretary of Defense level. In June, the Honorable Robert M. Spear, the Acting Secretary of the Army, and Sergeant Major of the Army, Daniel A. Daly, visited with scientists and engineers from the Army Research Office at Research Triangle Park in Durham, North Carolina. So it's great to see the excitement and the results and or the thought processes going on. So I wanted to come down here at least on the way. Thank you guys and let you know it's appreciated. At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, our mantra is, Discover, Innovate, and Transition. This year, Army researchers unexpectedly observed a reaction between an aluminum nanopowder and water that may have future implications for hydrogen fuel cells. David McNally filed this report. Army scientists add a newly engineered nanopowder with urine and observe unexpected results. Hydrogen releases from the urine at a fast and furious rate. As an Army scientist, we try to develop new materials and technologies that will benefit, particularly the soldier in the field. The research team announced earlier this summer that a nano-galvanic aluminum-based powder they were developing produced pure hydrogen when coming into contact with water. The researchers then observed a similar reaction when adding their powder to any liquid-containing water. This powder, which we have discovered, reacts very fast with water to produce hydrogen. There's both scientists and engineers at the lab. The engineers, you know, there's a lot of problems that come in, engineering problems that we are just adapting to and trying to overcome. The scientists here are the ones that do the pie-in-the-sky research and where the real discoveries are made. For soldiers in austere environments, there are many precious commodities, but power and energy is increasingly important to run communications and electronic skier. And urine is usually not in short supply. When we demonstrated it with urine, we saw almost a factor of two-fold increase in the reaction rates. And so in some ways we're all very excited because it opens it up for additional potential applications that the rates are so fast and so efficient. The team is still investigating why urine causes a faster reaction, but it may have something to do with the electrolytes and the acidity of the liquid, they said. I'm excited about it because it was sort of a spontaneous finding. We weren't expecting to develop this material specifically for hydrogen production, and it was a group effort. In a statement, the laboratory director, Dr. Philip Percanti, said it may find great utility for forward-deployed troops who need a compact and lightweight energy source. We've had an overwhelming response to at least the initial video that we released, and we've been having industry partners, multiple industry partners contact us, inquiring about potential licensing. We've had numerous universities contact us. Army partners have also reached out to us. In the coming months, the team will continue to investigate and push the limits of the discovery to try and understand its implications. Following the path of the Open Campus Initiative, researchers continue to seek more collaboration with industry. In August, a team of ARL Aerospace Engineers toured an aviation factory in Manassas, Virginia. Aurora Flight Sciences is focused on the development and manufacturing of advanced unmanned systems in aerospace vehicles. So in addition to its very innovative, unique design, it has several subsystem technologies that in themselves would lead to huge performance gains, or even for traditional autographs. Laboratory officials indicated they were interested in pursuing a collaborative research and development agreement with the company, which has also done extensive work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Also this year, the Warrior Web Program funded by DARPA came to an end. However, Army researchers hoped to find future collaborators to expand on its potential. Joyce Conant had this report. Future soldiers may march longer, carry heavier gear, and be more mentally sharp thanks to DOD-funded research into what's known as the Warrior Web Program. An example of where this might benefit a soldier would be if they're doing a very long duration, physically demanding task, where they require a lot of endurance. By having a suit that is providing physical assistance, they're able to maintain their level of physical performance over a much longer duration. The suit has pulleys and gears designed to prevent and reduce injuries caused by dynamic events typically found in the warfighter's environment. These physical augmentation technologies have the ability to provide just a reduced physical workload during the very high demand tasks that these soldiers do. Scientists and engineers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have been testing variations of the suit for more than three years at the Soldier Performance and Equipment Advanced Research or SPIR Facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground. I think longer term the systems have benefits to be integrated into larger soldier systems and it can be integrated with other systems, other capabilities to provide a marked advantage for our soldiers and warfighters in the future. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, CORDOPPA, has many partner organizations across the DOD and academia. What we're trying to do is look at a way to collaborate in the final phase of this program to prevent the program from closing as a DOD program that we can keep it going in a multiply beneficial way for the Army and the services. Research has tested the same group of soldiers in April and again in June with and without the suit and gathered massive amounts of data. We have an indoor lab capability where we can instrument up the soldiers and keep them in an environment where you can just get pure data in things like treadmills, motion capture and be able to analyze everything in the lab. Officials are still discussing the path forward. I think at least another good five to ten years to be ready for the infantry soldier. The lab held an open house in October to further solidify outreach efforts. David McNally had this report. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory kicked off a two-day open house by hosting more than 400 representatives from industry and academia to foster future partnerships. It's really about putting us, all of us, this community at the center of a network and forming an ecosystem that allows us to partner in a brand new way. This is the fourth year the laboratory has opened its doors to potential research partners with its open campus open house. The Open Campus Initiative is a business model for building an integrated work environment with academia, industry and government by fueling innovation through joint research and development. Access to the community is really what brings us all together and that's the way we like to see it. It's a community of science, technology and engineering focused on Army specific problems. ARL officials said the approach has led to a streamlined process for developing cooperative research and development agreements, or CRATAS, the business framework for creating partnerships with the federal government. ARL has facilities across the nation. In recent years, the laboratory has expanded its reach by establishing satellite locations in California and Texas. During the open house, the laboratory announced a new satellite location in Illinois. The Army's Corporate Laboratory also has a presence in Orlando, Florida, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and two sites in Maryland. But this is really key, right? Again, it's proximity that I think breeds trust. It's trust that breeds true partnership. It's true partnership that leads to true collaboration and that's really what we're after. Major General Cedric T. Wins, U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command Commanding General said the open campus initiative allows Army researchers to be successful in their endeavors. You have to continue to be forward thinking, forward looking and being forward thinking and forward looking is done through partnerships, partnerships with folks in academia, folks in industry and folks in other governmental agencies. The official from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, gave the keynote address October 18 at APG's Millet Training Facility. Ricky E. Smith, Army Capabilities Integration Center Senior Professional for Capabilities Development, told the audience that the Army needs partners in technology to modernize but that there may be a cultural issue with the adoption of robotics. I like to turn to my infantry friends and say, hey, your survival depends and your protection depends on that robotic wingman, that machine over there. They're not real comfortable with that. But if I said, I'll bring your bullets, I'll bring your food that way, they're okay with that. So maybe the way we get through the cultural divide is through the sustainment side as opposed to the maneuver side. We'll see how that goes. Robotics is just one area researchers are exploring. The laboratory has nine essential research areas which cover a broad spectrum of future technology challenges. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen gave the keynote address October 19. I'm really excited about the possibilities that this gathering represents. When you look at the things that have been done at the Army Research Lab, it sometimes seems like science fiction. This is the kind of stuff that George Lucas told us would be coming in Star Wars movies and yet it's happening right here at the Army Research Lab and their partners who are bringing these innovations to soldiers and Marines today. The October announcement of ARL Central was followed by a ribbon cutting ceremony in Chicago November 10 attended by the then acting secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Chicago Mayor Rami manual and the new partners from academia and industry. It's very unique in that the way we're going to have be very collaborative and bring all of the academic institutions to bear. So exciting times ahead and it will be a force multiplier for already e-commerce we proceed. Officials said the new regional partnership would broaden access to technology innovations from the Midwest. So ARL Central, that's the third extension that we've opened so far. We're really starting to fill in the ecosystem across the country now for all of our extensions. ARL Central is mostly about the work we're going to do in the Internet of Battlefield Things. It's about the work we're going to do in material science at the dynamic compression sector at Argonne laboratories and perhaps it's about some work we're going to do in quantum information sciences. But it really completes the picture and allows us to extend our reach into the central part of the country. So coupled with ARL West, ARL South, and the soon to be established ARL Northeast, we'll have ARL locations nationally. The laboratory also got some key personnel announcements during the year. Dr. Philip Percanti was named ARL Director. Dr. Jeffrey Zabinski officially took the helm of ARL's Weapons and Materials Research Directorate. Dr. Jarrett Riddick assumed leadership at the lab's Vehicle Technology Directorate. And Cindy Badell will soon join the Senior Executive Service and become Director of the Computational Information Sciences Directorate. Oh, I'm very excited about the team we have in place now. It's been a long time since we've had all of our directors in place. We're very successful this year in getting permanent position for CISD, permanent position for the ARL Director, which I personally am very excited about. And soon we'll have permanent positions in ATRED and within SED. So I suspect within the next three to four months, the entire ARL leadership team will be formed. I forgot to mention one other very important person. We've got our leadership in place in WMRD as well, Dr. Zabinski. So the whole group now is going to come together. And I think this group in particular is focused on the future and focused on outcomes for the Army. And that's exactly where we want to take ARL for the future. We also said farewell to Dr. Laurel Allender, Director of ARL's Human Research and Engineering Directorate, as she retired this year from federal service after a distinguished career. ARL also appointed a new Senior Research Scientist for Intelligent Systems, Dr. Brian Sattler, and Dr. Alexander Cott assumed his role as ARL's Chief Scientist. The high point of the year, though, was the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Army Research Laboratory. Officially formed in 1992, ARL has become the nation's premier laboratory for land warfare. ARL 25, what a great year it's been. A real celebration of the folks that are here today and, more importantly, a celebration for those that have come before us. From an S&T perspective, we have the benefit of all the great work that ARL staffers who have contributed to the Army's mission have given us. And it's really our job now to take their legacy of important research and deliver it to the future Army. The laboratory honored its valued employees with the 2017 ARL Honorary Awards that officials presented at the 25th anniversary gala. Here's a look at this year's winners. With celebrations and observances like the burying of a time capsule to be opened in the year 2067, tours of ARL alumni, and an ARL 25 gala, employees took notice of the lab's heritage and significance. The big question for us for 2018 is where ARL will align with regard to the new Army Modernization of Futures Command. That study is underway right now, and in about two months, we should know the answer. Of course, then the question will be, how do we best position the research that ARL does for our warfighters within that Modernization Command? The other thing the Army's done is stood up what they call cross-functional teams. ARL plays a very significant part in some of those cross-functional teams for the future and how we position our technology in those cross-functional teams will be especially important. So for us, the future is a little bit uncertain, but very, very exciting because it gives ARL an opportunity to take the technology that we've been working on for so long and get it accelerated and into the hands of warfighters very, very fast. And that's the idea is to focus on outcomes, to focus on the future of the Army from a warfighting capability point of view, and to position ARL so that owns the white space. All of that unknown information about S&T and the new capabilities for the Army for the future, those are the things that we're going to focus on next year. As we look forward to the next year, we also take time out to reflect on our accomplishments, our co-workers, and our mission to discover, innovate, and transition science and technology to ensure dominant strategic land power. From all of us at ARL, I'm Tracy Dean wishing you a happy holiday and the very best in 2018.