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Applied Intuition’s Simian simulation platform can create thousands of scenarios for autonomous vehicle development. | Source: Applied Intuition

The Army and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) have selected Applied Intuition to deliver an end-to-end autonomy software development and testing platform for the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV program). The contract has a $49 million ceiling for the competitive prototyping phase that will span two years. 

Applied Intuition will be drawing on its expertise in developing software products to develop and test autonomous vehicles to provide a foundational modeling and simulation platform for the RCV program. The platform aims to give the RCV program office, under the umbrella of PEO Ground Combat Systems, the ability to manage software development and testing for mission and mobility autonomy to be used in RCV variants. 

The RCV program turned to Applied Intuition and its end-to-end autonomy development solutions to improve its off-road maneuvering, obstacle avoidance and safety capabilities. Applied Intuition’s toolchain will also help the RCV program evaluate autonomy stacks created by the Army and its other commercial partners. 

“We are excited to bring our proven enterprise autonomy development toolchain to the Army’s RCV program,” Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, said. “Our modeling and simulation development environment will enable continuous improvement of autonomy software across the program’s lifecycle and will ultimately enhance the Army‘s broader approach to autonomy stack development.”

The contract, part of the Software Pathway under the Agile Acquisition Framework, is a result of DIU’s Commercial Solutions Opening, which involves the Army’s RCV program working in close coordination with DIU to acquire commercial software.

“The innovative use of the Department of Defense’s Software Acquisition Pathway to acquire commercial modeling and simulation software for autonomy development is a landmark achievement,” Colin Carroll, the Head of Government at Applied Intuition, said. “We look forward to helping the RCV program and the DOD quickly and safely scale production of autonomous systems.”

Applied Intuition was founded in 2017, and has since raised over $350 million. In November 2021, when it announced its last funding round, the company was valued at $3.6 billion. It offers a suite of products aimed at facilitating testing for autonomous vehicles. These include Simian, the company’s core simulator that provides comprehensive scenario coverage for AV development, and Spectral, a platform to train, test and validate perception systems. 

The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has offices in Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Munich, Stockholm, Seoul and Tokyo.

Applied Intuition recently partnered with Ouster, which recently announced it was merging with Velodyne, with the goal of speeding up customer deployment of LiDAR-based perception systems. The partnership will involve the companies collaborating to create, test and release synthetic models of Ouster LiDARs.