ERIS Shopping Notice: Distributed Decentralized Control & Estimation

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) has issued a "shopping notice" (DARPA-SN-26-101) under the Expedited Research Innovation System (ERIS) program. Running from August 10, 2026, to July 31, 2027, this initiative seeks innovative, post-competitive, and awardable solutions for Topic Area 2 to support decentralized, distributed, and horizontally integrated command and control for heterogeneous combat agents. DARPA IPTO aims to advance the state of the art in autonomy frameworks to manage decentralized control at the edge, particularly in compute- and bandwidth-limited environments. Key areas of interest include resilient agent-to-agent collaboration, scalability across thousands of nodes using lightweight algorithms, and transition capabilities from unclassified development environments to classified combat systems. The scope spans short-term efforts as well as a space autonomy program utilizing existing space-based hardware. Entities with existing, awardable ERIS solutions can participate by flagging their solution video via email. New prospective providers must submit a video solution through the standard ERIS portal during the designated monthly collection periods between August 2026 and July 2027, using the required title format and emailing a submission notification to DARPA. Solutions deemed awardable through the standard ERIS assessment process will be considered for potential funding.