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U.S. DOT FY 2026 Phase I Pre-Solicitation Q&A



This U.S. DOT Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Pre-solicitation Q&A Forum provides small businesses an opportunity to submit clarifying questions on the topics published in the U.S. DOT Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Phase I Pre-Solicitation. Questions will be answered by the Technical Experts/Topic Authors at the U.S. DOT Operating Administrations during this period. Questions shall be limited to improving the understanding of a particular topic's requirements and should not share proposal ideas nor proprietary information.

The U.S. DOT’s FY 2026 Pre-Solicitation period is April 29, 2026, through May 29, 2026, at 5:00 pm Eastern Time (ET). Only questions posted within this period will be responded to.

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Search: Browse the existing questions by category to find the topic you are interested in and to see if your question has already been addressed. If you see a question, you are also interested in, you can add a vote to the question, or leave a comment.

Post: If your question has not already been posted, use the “Type your technical question” box at the bottom of the page to enter your question.
  1. Select the research topic your question is related to from the drop-down menu that appears when you begin typing.
  2. You may add more detail in the Description box (optional). Do NOT attach any files. The U.S. DOT shall not consider any submitted materials other than questions.
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  4. When finished, select “Post idea.” If you registered, you will be able to track responses to your post. Please include only one question or comment per post to help us keep the forum organized.
Please note, all comments will be public information. Potential offerors shall not include in the question(s) or comment(s) any information that they do not wish to be made public. Telephone inquiries or meeting requests will not be addressed and may be removed. The U.S. DOT shall not respond to requests for advice or guidance on any offeror’s solution to any SBIR topic and shall not consider any submitted materials other than questions.

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89 results found

  1. 1 vote

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  2. External or Internal Surface Temperature

    Does the solicitation require the coating to indicate temperature thresholds corresponding to internal package temperatures, or is external surface temperature indication sufficient for compliance purposes?"

    1 vote

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  3. For the Freight Corridor Predictive Intelligence topic, is preference given to solutions that provide dual functionality — simultaneously mo

    For the Freight Corridor Predictive Intelligence topic, is preference given to solutions that provide dual functionality — simultaneously monitoring both commercial vehicle health and the structural integrity of the weigh station platform itself using the same sensor array?

    1 vote

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  4. Must multi-agent coordination be demonstrated, or is single-agent with extensibility enough?

    On the multi-agent coordination requirement, how much of that needs to be shown at this stage? A small demo with two adjacent edge nodes coordinating is a different scope than a single-agent demo with multi-agent extensibility just documented, so we'd like to scope it right.

    1 vote

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  5. Preferred archived data sources, or is sourcing offeror-driven?

    For archived data, is there a preferred source (NPMRDS, RITIS, state DOT data lakes, the Work Zone Data Exchange), or is that really up to the offeror?

    1 vote

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  6. What CV *********** rate should the benefits analysis assume?

    What connected-vehicle *********** rate should the benefits analysis assume? The topic asks for a with-vs-without-advisory comparison, and the result swings a lot depending on whether we're modeling at 5%, 10%, or 20% ***********.

    1 vote

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  7. Is CARMA / Saxton Lab integration expected for the HIL demo?

    For the HIL setup, does the program want to see integration with CARMA / the Saxton Lab, or is it fine to use our own HIL environment? Trying to figure out if CARMA integration is something that actually matters competitively here.

    1 vote

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  8. C-V2X as baseline given 5.9 GHz reallocation, or is DSRC still acceptable?

    With the 5.9 GHz reallocation and the move to C-V2X, should we be treating C-V2X (PC5/Uu) as the baseline for the HIL demo, or is DSRC still on the table?

    1 vote

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  9. Data integration plan — strategy document or working ingest pipelines?

    Is this more of a strategy document, or do you want to see working ingest pipelines for at least some of the data sources by the end?

    1 vote

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  10. Digital twin expectation — microsimulation, generative AI, or existing platform integration?

    For the digital twin piece — are you thinking more along the lines of physics-based microsimulation (Aimsun, SUMO, Vissim), or a generative AI model trained on real corridor traces? And is the program open to building on top of an existing digital-twin platform, or would you rather see something built from scratch?

    1 vote

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  11. Priority among data sources, and are licensed feeds (NPMRDS, ATRI) government-furnished?

    Is there a priority order on the data sources? We're weighing NPMRDS, ATRI, state WIM, FAF, TPIMS, and connected vehicle BSMs, and it'd help to know which ones the program sees as most important. Also, for the licensed ones like NPMRDS and ATRI — are those typically furnished to awardees, or should we plan to budget for them?

    1 vote

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  12. Clarification on 80% accuracy target — spatial unit and error metric?

    Quick clarification on the 80% accuracy target for 30–60 minute forecasts — is that measured at the segment level, at specific bottlenecks, or across full origin-destination pairs? And what error metric are you using? Whether it's MAPE on travel time vs. classification accuracy on a congestion label changes the modeling approach quite a bit.

    1 vote

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  13. Alternate approach to traffic congestion prevention and mitigation

    This SBIR solicitation focuses on traffic congestion prevention and mitigation via advisories intended to optimize overall traffic flow. Would SBIR consider funding an alternate approach to traffic congestion prevention and mitigation, which allows all motor vehicles of any type to operate safely in near bumper-to-bumper proximity, thereby significantly increasing the throughput of all roadways? This is achievable without self-driving and with complete ad hock autonomy of each vehicle (i.e., no platoons or preplanning of any type). Fully automated acceleration-deceleration is achievable with adjacent lead-follow vehicle proximity dependencies including speed, braking performance, road conditions, and accommodations to permit ad hock vehicle…

    1 vote

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  14. Standards and Compliance Contexts

    Does "explainable" imply a particular standard — SHAP/LIME-style local explanations, audit-grade decision logs, regulatory-aligned model cards — or domain-specific explainability tied to DOT compliance contexts?

    1 vote

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  15. Trusted Intermediary

    Should "Trusted Intermediary" be read as a specific institutional form — federal agency, nonprofit consortium, neutral third party — or is the topic indifferent as long as the technical privacy guarantees hold?

    1 vote

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  16. Existing Data Partnerships

    Is having a private fleet data partner committed at Phase I a competitive prerequisite, or is securing one part of the Phase II commercialization plan?

    1 vote

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  17. Phase I Scope Expectation

    What is the expected Phase I demonstration scope on $200K over 6 months — a working prototype validated against real fleet data, or a feasibility framework demonstrated on synthetic / public datasets with Phase II reserved for live integration?

    1 vote

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  18. Does the topic favor a specific privacy-preserving approach — federated learning, differential privacy, secure enclaves, or homomorphic encr

    Does the topic favor a specific privacy-preserving approach — federated learning, differential privacy, secure enclaves, or homomorphic encryption — or is the choice left to the proposer based on use case?

    1 vote

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  19. Is condition-monitoring data from in-vehicle pre-trip inspections — tire tread depth, brake adjustment indicators, defect detection — consid

    Is condition-monitoring data from in-vehicle pre-trip inspections — tire tread depth, brake adjustment indicators, defect detection — considered in-scope as "private industry data" for the Trusted Intermediary framework? Or is the topic specifically targeting retrospective operational data such as HOS logs, ELD telematics, and CSA history?

    1 vote

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  20. 1 vote

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