Award Data

Under the Phase I program, ASI will examine the available technologies for improving manipulation, create preliminary designs of how to integrate these technologies on current platforms (the Talon and Packbot), and simulate the effects of improved dynamic modeling and sensor feedback on manipulator performance. The deliverables for Phase I will thus be: • Preliminary design of retrofit packa ...

Current mobile manipulators require extensive operator involvement to perform even simple tasks, such as opening a door, picking up an object, or emptying a container. “Fly-the-gripper” algorithms have been implemented to free the user from specifying joint velocities when a desired x, y, z gripper path is desired (Berkemeier, Poulson, et al. 2008), (Johnston, et al. 2008). Further, â ...

For IR sensors, the sensing detector and readout circuitry (ROIC) are commonly joined on a pixel by pixel level in a process referred to as Hybridization. Hybridization requires bonding an ROIC die and a detector die on a pixel level, where the total number of pixels required to bond and form interconnects ranges from 1,000,000 to 16,000,000 individual pixels. The material of choice for Hybridi ...

Wiring and connectors are particularly vulnerable to electromagnetic interference. This is in part due to the harnesses that place both power and signal wiring in close proximity. For many applications, the solution to such a problem might be increasing the amount of shielding on the wires. However, for aviation platforms solutions that add weight are typically not viable. Because they form conduc ...

This project will develop and demonstrate a prototype Modular Perfusion Bioreactor (MPB) for tissue engineering applications. While many unique styles of bioreactors have been proposed for various types of stem cell and tissue cultures, there is not a single, easy-to-use device that accommodates the multiple diverse needs of multiple tissue culture types.. In order to take advantage of recent ad ...

Randomness is required for a variety of computational, statistical, testing, and security related applications. Of particular interest are future commercial high-speed encryption applications, such as high-speed cryptographic key exchange for quantum cryptography. This encryption technology is expected to be coming to market in the near future, and there are currently no commercially available t ...

Primordial, Carnegie Mellon University, iRobot, and AeroVironment propose Bedlam OCU™—an adversarial reasoning system for unmanned platforms. Team Primordial will start with our existing state-of-the-art Surveyor OCU, which already fully or partially meets 78% of the topic’s requirements including enabling UAV/UGV collaboration, autonomously tracking targets, predicting adversary movement, ...

Primordial, Evolution Robotics and Professor Clark Olson propose SoldierVisionTM: a vision-based autonomous navigation system for soldiers in the GPS-denied battlefield. Existing wearable dead-reckoning devices, relying on inertial measurement units (IMUs) and stride estimates, rapidly lose accuracy as the soldier moves and are currently of limited value for the dismounted soldier. However, recent ...

Simulution, the National Capital Area Simulation Center and Combat Medical Systems Inc., propose to produce a realistic simulator for training combat medics to control hemorrhage from the chest, abdomen and groin. This simulator will consist of a mannequin that has a durable base with replaceable blood vessels, organs and skin pads. Organs will be created with pre-made injuries or the trainer can ...

A need for miniaturized mass spectrometer (MS) instrumentation exists for both stationary point monitoring and applications where instrument size is critical, including military swatch test monitoring of chemical agent permeation rates and field detection of chemical agents. A 50% size and weight reduction over current portable MS instrumentation through modern microfabrication techniques while ma ...