TSM Special Topic - OUSW R&E CDAO Enterprise Autonomy Division: Advanced Data Labeling

TSM Special Topic - OUSW R&E CDAO Enterprise Autonomy Division: Advanced Data Labeling

Response Date: June 09, 2026, 12:00PM EST

I.    BACKGROUND
The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) Enterprise Autonomy Division provides enterprise capabilities to support the development and fielding of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems across the Department of War (DoW). This portfolio includes the curation and management of data for the purposes of training computer vision (CV) models used within autonomous platforms. 

While CDAO has existing labeling capabilities and a vast repository of data for training AI algorithms, warfighter needs demand that CDAO continue to research and evaluate new labeling providers as the industry rapidly evolves due to technological advances and generative AI. 

This Special Topic Opportunity is focused on advanced data labeling capabilities to prepare multimodal imagery for training and testing CV algorithms to be used within autonomous systems. This includes the labeling of fields and image characteristics necessary for informing autonomous platform maneuvers and precision guidance.

II.    PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

There is widespread interest throughout the DoW for enterprise-level data curation and labeling capabilities necessary for processing and preparing electro-optical / infrared (EO/IR) imagery and full-motion video (FMV) for training, validating, and testing CV algorithms used within autonomous platforms.
 
The development of more advanced behaviors and decision-making schemas for autonomous systems has been constrained by the way training data has been labeled with bounding boxes and object classification. Labeled data limited to bounding boxes and object classification is insufficient for the development of the next generation of intelligent autonomous systems. Autonomous platforms across domains require additional information from the platform perception software to inform autonomous behaviors like object avoidance or maintaining standoff distance localized to a point on the object.  

Such information may include: 

•    Weather conditions (e.g., sunny, cloudy, foggy, and rain)
•    Lighting conditions and source orientation
•    EO/IR sensor characteristics (e.g., type, resolution, look angle, and distortion factors) 
•    Object environment and sensor domain (i.e., maritime, aerial, terrestrial, or sub-surface)
•    Object dimensions (e.g., length, and height)
•    Object pose, orientation, and bearing
•    Segmentation or boundaries of key object features
•    Percentage of object occlusion 
•    Semantic segmentation of complex objects and scenes

The solution space for these capabilities is vast, so CDAO is pursuing solutions across a range of data labeling services and capabilities. Performers should provide solutions that address a subset of the information listed above and any additional information that the performer believes would be valuable for training autonomous systems.
 
III.    THE OPPORTUNITY

Entities are invited to submit solutions against this opportunity that meet or exceed the desired capabilities described below. All submissions must be made to the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, in conformance with the requirements, and processes identified within the official Tradewinds announcement available at SAM.gov. For the content requirements of the video submission, submitters shall follow the instructions in paragraph 4 below. Aside from the video content instructions identified in paragraph 4 below, submitting entities shall follow all requirements and processes within the Tradewinds Announcement v10.0, available on SAM.gov.

A.    Submissions against this opportunity will be collected between May 08, 2026, and June 09, 2026,  12:00PM EST. Reference      the official Tradewinds Announcement for details on the solution submission process.

B.    When submitting solutions against this Topic, select ‘Special Topic Submission’ under the ‘Submission Type’ field, and ‘CDAO Data Labeling Special Topic’ under the ‘Relevant Strategic Focus Area’ field.

C.    To identify that your video submission is being submitted against the OUSW R&E CDAO Enterprise Autonomy: Advanced Data Labeling TSM Special Topic, the title of your video submission should start with “CDAO ADL:” and then continue with your specific title (e.g., CDAO ADL: Quix13 Software Solution).

D.    Solutions that are deemed compliant and received timely will be queued for an assessment beginning June 10, 2026, and concluded no later than 12:00PM EST on July 07, 2026.

E.    In accordance with the Tradewinds process, solutions will be assessed against the Tradewinds rubric (Appendix B of the Tradewinds Announcement (pages 23-24)) and assigned a rating of either ‘Awardable’ or ‘Non-awardable.’

F.    Participating entities will receive notification of their assessment rating on or immediately after the conclusion of the assessment period (July 07, 2026).

G.    Solutions assessed as awardable will be placed in the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace and made available for future procurement activities.

IV.    DESIRED SOLUTION CAPABILITIES

For the content of the video submission against this opportunity, all submissions must adhere to the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace guidelines and submission instructions (TSM Announcement Section VII), and the below content instructions. As identified within the TSM Announcement, there are four required content elements that each video submission must address. Within each of the required content elements, for responses to this Special Topic, submitters shall include the following information:

A.    Defining the Problem (Address the following as part of TSM criteria 1):

• The problem statement has already been defined (see paragraph 2 above). It  is recommended that minimal time be spent on problem identification, however, the vendor must clearly demonstrate how their proposed solution directly addresses the identified problem within the video submission.

B.    Accelerating the Mission (Address the following as part of TSM criteria 2):

• Demonstrate how the technical solution provided satisfies the requirement to label imagery data in a way that enables advanced autonomous behaviors. 
• Where available, provide examples of systems that have been trained using the labeling capabilities presented and describe how the labeling enabled autonomous capability.  
• Detail the ability of the proposed solution to operate on a government owned IL5 network. 

C.    Advancing the State of the Art (Address the following as part of TSM criteria 3):

• Submissions must be scalable and novel. Submissions should highlight how their labeling capabilities leverage cutting edge technologies and advance the state-of-the-art. 
• Detail the ability of the proposed solution to provide labels with the following format(s): COCO-style JSON for detections, segmentations, and key points with a DOTA-style extension for oriented bounding boxes and a BOP-style extension for 6 DoF pose and scale information, or an alternative approach. Where an alternative approach is proposed, ensure to identify and detail the alternative approach within the discussion of this criterion. 

D.    Business Model (Address the following as part of TSM criteria 4):

• Detail how the business model for the proposed solution supports long-term viability, encourages broader adoption of the solution, and provides a clear method of cost estimation for labeling efforts to include potential  future procurement on a fixed-price basis. 

V.    AWARDS

A.    All costs of preparing and submitting solution videos and submission forms are the responsibility of the submitting entity and not eligible for funding or reimbursement by the government.

B.    Assessment as “awardable” and placement into the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace does not guarantee any current or future award.

C.    The sponsor for this Special Topic (CDAO Enterprise Autonomy Division) has identified that future awards resulting from this opportunity, if any, may be made through prototype other transaction agreements under the authority of 10 USC 4022 and/or contract. 

D.    Resources related to the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace process can be found at: https://www.tradewindai.com/tw-marketplace