Award Data

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies covering a broad range of technologies and processes have been under continuous and accelerating development since the 80s. While there are still fundamental hurdles such as low production rates and small sizes, AM holds tremendous promise in terms of revolutionizing manufacturing. Recent trends include direct-printing and incorporating sensors and electr ...

Free Space Optical (FSO) communication systems provide many benefits for satellite communications, including high data rates and low Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) compared to traditional RF communication systems.Additionally, FSO systems operate without RF emissions and are inherently immune to RF interference and jamming.The narrow optical beams and small Field-of-View of the optical receivers al ...

Adaptive Optics allow ground-based astronomical observatories to overcome atmospheric distortion limited observation by using natural and artificial guide stars to measure the distortion. Sodium-layer guide stars provide near all-sky coverage for high resolution astronomy. Over the last 20 years, Optically Pumped Semiconductor Laser (OPSL), also referred to as Vertically Extended Cavity Surface ...

The aerothermal environment for hypersonic flight vehicles is severe and can generate extremely high material temperatures. These high-temperature environments can cause intense localized heating, which may result in local pockets and/or structural instabilities, especially at vehicle leading-edge regions, and may lead to disruptions that affect vehicle performance. The aerothermal environment may ...

This SBIR Phase I project proposes a visual processing system for automated target recognition. Inspired by biological vision systems and hierarchical memory models, the proposed system is capable of learning hierarchical invariant features from unlabeled data that are independent of object labels. The model exploits these learned features to create hierarchical representations of target memories ...

For prediction of hypersonic aerothermodynamics, knowledge of the relevant disturbance levels is required to determine transition locations in flight at the altitudes of interest. Tao Systems and University of Maryland (UMD) propose to develop a flight platform and measurement system capable of acquiring pressure, temperature, density, velocity fluctuations, and particulates using a miniaturized, ...

For prediction of hypersonic aerothermodynamics, knowledge of the relevant disturbance levels is required to determine transition locations in flight at the altitudes of interest. Tao Systems and University of Maryland (UMD) propose to develop a flight platform and measurement system capable of acquiring pressure, temperature, density, velocity fluctuations, and particulates using a miniaturized, ...

Metron, Inc. and Portland State University propose to design, develop, test and demonstrate algorithms that fuse heterogeneous sensor data at an information theoretic level and process these data as detection and tracking algorithms that can identify when new events or targets emerge that are not currently modeled. These algorithms have the potential to provide dramatic improvements in the capabil ...

ABSTRACT: The goal of this STTR is to design micro air vehicles (MAVs) capable of adaptively changing wing geometry utilizing novel active materials that overcome limitations of previous attempts at implementing practical biomimetic multifunctional structures. The basic idea of a morphing aircraft wherein the vehicle changes its shape to optimally perform in multiple flight segments holds the prom ...

The goal of this STTR is to design UAVs capable of adaptively changing wing geometry utilizing novel active materials that overcome limitations of previous attempts at developing and implementing practical and operational relevant morphing concepts.The basic idea of a morphing aircraft wherein the vehicle changes its shape to optimally perform in multiple flight segments holds the promise of achie ...