TurbineOne Awarded Air Force Contract to Deploy New Machine Learning Capability to Frontlines

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TurbineOne, the frontline perception company, was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to advance its machine learning capabilities and deploy its software with the United States Air Force. The specific offices within the Air Force that made the SBIR award to TurbineOne are the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and AFWERX. 

SBIR programs are highly competitive programs that encourage domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research and Development. Through a competitive awards-based program, SBIRs enable small businesses to explore their technological potential and provide the incentive to profit from its commercialization. By including qualified small businesses in the nation's R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated, and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs.

TurbineOne and AFSOC have partnered with AFWERX to usher in a new era for unprecedented situational awareness. The specific technology being developed is “AutoML,” a feature within TurbineOne’s Frontline Perception System. It uniquely enables Operators to make changes to machine-learning models in the field without having to code and without an internet connection. These newly tuned, or created, models can be immediately deployed to cameras, sensors, autonomous vehicles, and drones at the tactical edge to strengthen situational awareness, helping to keep warfighters and civilians safe.

“U.S. warfighters do not have machine learning in their deployed kits, but it is critically valuable when configured for military missions,” according to Ian Kalin, TurbineOne’s CEO. “AutoML is a revolutionary software technology that will salvage years of investments in machine learning by enabling Operators to synchronize real-world data with the training data used to create the original algorithms.”

TurbineOne was founded by Ian Kalin and Matt Amacker. Kalin previously served in the U.S. Navy as a Counter Terrorism Officer after witnessing the Pentagon attacked on September 11th, and he later served as the first Chief Data Officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Amacker has been awarded over 110 patents and was the former Head of Applied R&D Lab at Google. He was also a Principal Engineer at Amazon and the Head of Car AI for the Toyota Research Institute. Together, Amacker and Kalin realized that people serving in dangerous frontline environments do not have Machine Learning (ML) capabilities readily available; TurbineOne was created to address the national security challenge.

AFRL and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research process in an attempt to speed up the experience, broaden the pool of potential applicants and decrease bureaucratic overhead. Beginning in SBIR 18.2, and now in SBIR 21.1, the Air Force has begun offering 'The Open Topic' SBIR/STTR program that is faster, leaner and open to a broader range of innovations. The Press Release authority is the Air Force Special Operations Command Public Affairs (PA) office.

TurbineOne’s contract is a Phase-II type, which generally authorizes awards up to $750,000. TurbineOne plans to successfully deliver to its customer and end-users within one year of the contract award.