Johns Hopkins, Applied Physics Lab

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU APL) is a not-for-profit university-affiliated research center (UARC) based in Laurel, Maryland, providing research, engineering, and analytical support across national security, space, and defense domains. In the autonomous maritime space, APL serves as a key technical partner to Navy program offices including PMS 406, supporting development of the Unmanned Maritime Autonomy Architecture (UMAA) — a set of open interface standards that modularize autonomy software into reusable components across USV platforms. APL's ORCAstrate team conducts integration, testing, and operational evaluation of commercial USVs under the DoD's Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) program, with recent work spanning GARC, CUSV, Swift Sea-Stalker, and MARTAC M-18 platforms.