Award Data

Heterogeneous Integrated Circuits (HIC) combine different ICs into a single package. In this DARPA Phase I SBIR, Alphacore and our partner Riscure will conduct a feasibility study to create a method of identifying which ICs are in a package through available side channels, without opening the package. A Grid-Array Side-channel Probe (GASP) system will be studied for possible development, comprisin ...

Dragoon’s successful Phase I effort resulted in a preliminary design for an Inexpensive Long Endurance Drone (ILED).  The current approach to designing and manufacturing unmanned systems has resulted in exquisite assets which are aren’t economically viable when considering mission sets where attrition is guaranteed.  In order to manufacture a highly capable platform at a low cost, a novel ap ...

Current artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are built to align with ground truth or consensus of trusted human decision-makers. This is not effective for difficult decision domains, such as patient triage, where even experts disagree on the best course of action. A key reason human experts disagree is that their individual attributes influence their decision-making. To develop human-off-the-lo ...

Extending research on scalable Transformer models performed on previous SBIR-funded work for DARPA, Soar-Tech proposes an investigation into Scalable Language Association Models for Domain-specific Utterances in Novel Contexts (SLAMDUNK), a Phase II SBIR research effort focused on developing novel synthetic data generating pipelines and extending these pipelines with novel index-learning, token gr ...

The DASH SoC provides efficient, flexible, high-performance processing for sensing and communications edge applications. High-performance processors are primarily limited by inter-chip data transfer and latency, which is further complicated by the inclusion of flexible I/O. Fortunately, the DASH SoC framework overcomes the classical trade between flexibility and efficiency. The ontologically drive ...

If civilian and military equipment and personnel are to be effectively shielded in a high radiation environment- such as that found in space, or in a nuclear-powered naval vehicle, or in a nuclear-active battlefield environment- then protection against high-energy photons must be enhanced well beyond that currently delivered by existing materials. Materials that are highly effective in stopping th ...

This SBIR project will exploit the nanoscale physics delivered by percolating networks of PbTe nanoparticles to develop an efficient, low-cost imager of hard x-rays (5 – 300 keV) that has high spatial (< 55 mm) and energy resolutions (< 2 %). We developed methods to assemble PbTe into scalable solids using either templated growth or self-assembly. PbTe gels self-assembled from colloidal nanopart ...

In recent years, the nuclear power industry has been exploring the use of conventional powder metallurgy and hot-isostatic press technologies to fabricate large, near net shape components for high pressure components and other applications pertaining to the generation of electric power. Powder metallurgy has many manufacturing consistency and reliability advantages over other large-scale manufactu ...

This SBIR Phase I project will demonstrate that high sensitivity, radiation-resistance, and resolution can be elicited from nanostructured media composed of semiconducting nanoparticles derived from size-governed PbTe. In order to transform x-ray imaging instruments, nanocrystalline semiconductors provide an attractive material basis because they present a means of: 1) decreasing the underlying ma ...

An Inexpensive Long-Endurance Drone (ILED) requires a re-evaluation of the approach to UAS design and fielding.  Future systems will be evaluated in terms of the capability of the swarm of aircraft instead of individual aircraft. This change in perspective will cause the design trades to look much different than those made in the initial development and evolution of today’s group 1 and group 2 ...