ROADS Prize Challenge — Robotic Operation for Autonomous Delivery and Sustainment

ROADS, short for Robotic Operation for Autonomous Delivery and Sustainment, is a joint Army and DIU prize challenge for commercially derived autonomous vehicle systems. It targets the Department of War's non-tactical fleet, which the source material places at more than 150,000 vehicles, and it asks vendors to bring autonomy into ordinary logistics, not just demonstrations. The challenge carries a $30 million total pool for finalists and top performers, with the possibility of follow-on vehicle purchases. Teams must submit a 15-slide PDF deck in 16:9 format, show a path from SAE Level 2+ to Level 4 within 12 to 24 months, scale to 1,000 vehicles within a year after the challenge and meet cybersecurity requirements. The deadline is June 8, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET. Applicants that do best will look more like deployable fleet vendors than robotics researchers. The program rewards companies that can prove operational safety, teleoperation fallback, integration with commercial vehicles and a credible production path, because the challenge is designed to translate autonomy into military logistics use rather than fund open-ended research.

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