On February 18-19, 2026, researchers from leading institutions gathered in Pensacola Florida at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition to attend the inaugural National Center for Collaborative Autonomy workshop. During the invitation-only workshop, researchers worked on identifying the barriers to scaling the use of autonomous systems in multi-domain operations. They also brainstormed the fundamental capabilities necessary to move beyond these barriers.
“The goal of the workshop was to find common areas of research and also mechanisms by which we could collaborate,” says IHMC Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Niranjan Suri. “It became apparent that all these different organizations that came to the workshop have different strengths and that we can complement each other by working together to address the problems that the military and its autonomous systems are facing.”
IHMC Senior Research Scientist Dr. Matt Johnson says it became apparent during the workshop that there’s an urgent need to figure out how to scale the use of autonomous systems. “There was so much interest in working on this that everyone was excited in taking next steps. The group we assembled has a lot of resources that offer the potential to do more than we can do by ourself here at IHMC. That’s why we want this to be a national center. We want to tap into a broad range of organizations and their resources. By working together, we will be able to accomplish more than if we were all working by ourselves.”
Next steps for the NCCA group include writing papers and research proposals together. There’s also an opportunity to figure out how to apply autonomous systems beyond military use.
“For example, how do we apply autonomous systems in manufacturing and potentially heath care?” says Johnson. “There are other domains where we’re going to see automation have the same effect that it’s having in the Department of War space. So manufacturing and health care will run into the same challenge the DOW now faces of how to scale these autonomous systems. If the collaborative that we’ve created with the NCCA can get out front on this, it will really open a lot of doors not only for us here at IHMC, but also for all the organizations that showed up for the workshop.”
In addition to IHMC, the universities that attended the workshop include: Arizona State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, Brigham Young, Penn State, Mississippi, University of Maryland, University of Florida and the University of West Florida.
Workshop attendees included:
- Nancy Cooke (ASU)
- Jamie Gorman (ASU)
- Mohsen Moghaddam (GT)
- Martijn IJtsma (OSU)
- Mike Goodrich (BYU)
- Chad Little (PSU ARL)
- Aryya Gangopadhyay (UMD)
- Warren Dixon (UF)
- Wilmer Leal (UF)
- Karthik Sundaresan (GT)
- Daniel Carruth (MSU)
- Steve Russell (UWF)
- Hakki Sevil (UWF)
- Matthew Johnson (IHMC)
- Niranjan Suri (IHMC)
- Robert Griffin (IHMC)
- Cristian Nino (IHMC)
- Alessandro Amato (IHMC)
- Micael Vignati (IHMC)