Award Data

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) functions as virtual tutors that adapt to student responses. Such ITSs, however, do not yield student learning improvements equivalent to students tutored by human instructors. Ascertaining Un-Reported Affect (AURA) is a closed-loop, platform-independent “front-end” for informing ITSs with near real-time inferences of student engagement and affect during lea ...

The aims and opportunities of our Automated Control Enhancement(ACE) modules are enabling of automated training of complex tasks in animals; innovative new remote tele-presence/robot/canine operational teams; and, ultimately, entirely new classes and types of augmented-reality enhanced canines. Initial canine screening, selection, and early-skill acquisition are most efficiently performed within ...

Electrical circuit designers at Tier 2-4 suppliers to the Department of Defense (DoD) are currently using desktop computing to design their products. To improve the circuit design in the DoD supply chain, designers will need to be able to analyze their circuits with High Performance Computing resources. Designers seeking to innovate their circuits must have access to HPC facilities that maintain c ...

This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I project will develop and demonstrate a passivation process that will result in a pin-hole free protective coating for nickel-gold (Ni/Au) plated copper micro-channel coolers (MCC) used for laser diode thermal management. This proposed approach will use atomic layer deposition (ALD) to deposit highly uniform ceramic thin films on commercially availab ...

A leading risk facing the warfighter is from an improvised explosive device (IED) causing traumatic brain injury (TBI). The objective of this research is to develop mathematical tools to accurately predict stresses, strain and cavitation from blast overpressure that contribute to TBI and to develop mitigation technologies. Phase I showed that significant progress was made in establishing the appli ...

This Phase 1 SBIR project will establish the technical and commercial benefits of using previous task executions to augment model-based route planning for military applications. On this project, we will integrate a prototype route planner using ``Implicit Semantic Knowledge'' (ISK) derived from previous executions, with an existing model-based route planner, called ``Ground Guidance.'' Model-bas ...

A key technology with immediate potential for reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with fossil fuel power plants is carbon sequestration. To ensure successful CO2 sequestration, the ability to monitor leakage from the geologic storage sites and the pipelines delivering the CO2 to those sites is paramount. The goal of this SBIR is to accelerate the development of a low-cost fiber- ...

The demand for renewable energy is motivating R&D efforts toward the development of novel photovoltaic (PV) technology. Efficient and low cost solar cells will have an important role in defense applications particularly powering portable electronic devices. Current solar cells based on single crystal silicon are still not at a level to be cost effective when compared to other forms of electrical g ...

A need exists for polarization interrogating and discriminating Ladar systems to detect and discriminate defilade targets. In the proposed effort, Aerius, and our partner at the University of Illinois, will apply photonic crystal technology to extend Aerius’ high power, high wall plug efficiency, Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) results to develop a stable polarization switched VC ...

Small particulate emissions, such as those that fall within the PM2.5 classification, have a substantial negative effect on air quality and human health. Significant sources of PM2.5 emissions are small two-stroke engines that are used in outdoor power equipment such as leaf blowers, chain saws, and string trimmers, as well as larger two-stroke engines used in recreational vehicles such as all-ter ...