Award Data

The objective of this SBIR program is to demonstrate the use of patterned radar‐reflective roadway paint and marking tape to communicate safety messages from roadway infrastructure to vehicles and drivers. NanoSonic will work with transportation engineers in the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and radar design and system engineers in the Virginia Tech Hume Center. Radar‐reflectiv ...

Medical procedures are complex and require extensive training; research has shown that at least 750 individual operations may be required to perform procedures correctly. This learning curve is important, both for: 1) training new physicians, and 2) providing a way to develop and test improved medical methods. Development of sensing materials for synthetic tissues, organs, nerves, and skin (STONeS ...

Over 50,000 American warfighters had been wounded in action in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom with over 1,500 requiring major limb amputations. Warfighters and first responders must have proper tools for pain management during prolonged field care, allowing rapid stabilization and extraction while mitigating chronic pain effects. Recent studies indicate that magnetic fields can produce temp ...

Most research on scour assessment has traditionally focused on developing best-fit or envelope equations to estimate the maximum scour depths from physical experiments in a laboratory environment. However, obtaining an accurate estimate is always a challenge due to numerous uncertainties in the actual riverine or coastal environment. With advances in new surveying technologies and growing computat ...

A newly proposed combination of high-strength weathering steel sheet with Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) to leverage the benefits of both emerging technologies. The combined system offers benefits over traditional orthotropic steel decks and existing concrete or UHPC deck solutions, both of which offer high up-front costs in fabrication or forming. The resulting composite structure provide ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate the value of a quantitative risk assessment tool for management of geohazard threats to pipelines.Phase I will determine data sources for quantitative risk assessment to support management and decision-making needs of pipeline industry stakeholders; identify the potential market for such a tool; identify a study locati ...

Crushed aggregates play an important role in the safe and reliable operation of our nation’s railroad infrastructure.Over time, aggregates become fouled by finer particles, and if not monitored and remedied, this fouling can lead to catastrophic accidents such as train derailments.A handheld inspection system that can accurately perform a quantitative measure of aggregate gradation and degree of ...

Crushed aggregate is used as railroad ballast, drainage and stabilization material. Fouling of this aggregate reduces its performance: it loses its ability to drain water resulting in reduced strength. Substructure failure is a leading cause of rail accidents and it is a strategic priority to develop new methods for monitoring ballast condition. The challenge is that aggregate fouling does not pre ...

Check-in Check-out (CICO) is a widely used behavioral intervention for elementary and middle schools centered on goals, feedback, and communication with parents about daily behavioral performance. This project will develop a prototype platform to streamline and automate the delivery of CICO. The prototype will include an app, a user-friendly interface, and a dashboard to track progress and capture ...

In a previous National Science Foundation SBIR project, the developer created an online platform that uses songs to support mathematical learning. In the current project, the team will develop a prototype of a component of a platform to guide students in creating and producing their own music videos about algebra. The prototype will include a video production application, features to enhance learn ...