 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 this week 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. Mike Karski 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 ten 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 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 the next five years, but we have absolutely advanced technology. We are making an impact right now. MAST started as a five-year research alliance which extended to ten years and brought together nineteen 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 microelectronics 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 intelligence systems, said he is optimistic about the future. 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. By opinion, I'm extremely optimistic. We need to stay out in front of this technology curve because a lot of this technology is going to become freely available to anyone. We're now seeing a wave of commercialization in this space, but it's going to change the way we do business. I believe this is going to be a tactical offset strategy for the Army. The miniaturization of robotics, the combination of large and small platforms, what it brings to the networking, what it brings to the sensing, the ability to go fast in complex environments to be able to inject these into a scene ahead of the warfighter from overhead from the ground, in and out of buildings at a very, very rapid pace. All of that's coming. From Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, David McNally, ARL TV.