ADELPHI, Md. – Army partnerships with university researchers can unlock academia’s potential for supporting America’s industrial growth and warfighter readiness. The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory is positioned as the scientific nexus between academia, industry and the Army. ARL harnesses the expertise of Army researchers and the creative energy of enterprising external partners to inspire the creation of new technologies. As an example, autonomy researcher Dr. Byron Boots began his partnership with ARL while he was an assistant professor before he transformed his research on self-driving robotic vehicles into a tech startup called Overland AI. Boots collaborated with ARL for years on fundamental research relevant to the Army’s biggest challenges in autonomous navigation in rugged and unpredictable terrains. In 2022, Boots co-founded Overland AI, a university spinoff dedicated to developing ground autonomy solutions and other robotic capabilities for defense. Three years later, his company showcased its latest technology as part of Project Convergence Capstone 5, the Army’s premier technology experimentation event. “We approached Byron in 2018 at an IEEE conference where he was showcasing his machine learning research on small radio-controlled cars,” said Dr. Ethan Stump, ARL autonomy scientist. “We saw how relevant his work could be for Army off-road autonomy, so we invited him to work with us to apply his research on military unmanned ground vehicles, and he agreed.” This example showcases how academia and industry, and especially small businesses, can benefit from conducting fundamental research with ARL to help transition Army-relevant research into commercial ventures. For years, ARL worked closely with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to spearhead the advancement of off-road autonomous driving research in industry and academia. Boots was one of the many university researchers to whom ARL introduced a range of terrain scenarios that