Award Data

The need for novel weapons to defeat urban targets and rapidly immobalize enemy combatants hiding in bunkers, caves, and basements requires new weapons and tactics. Thermobaric warheads can provide tailored blast response optimized for the defeat of these targets with low collateral damage. In this Phase I SBIR program, Powdermet will develop surface-coated metallic particles that can deliver tail ...

For effective protection against radiated threats, it is important to understand not only the physics of the threats, but also to quantify the effects they have on mission-critical electrical systems. Radiated vulnerability and susceptibility testing requires delivery of high peak power and peak electric fields to distant targets. The most practical solution to simulate such environments on large ...

Aret Associates and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) propose an interdisciplinary effort to further develop and validate a robust, operational biomonitoring application that can process soil microbiome data to reliably detect episodic and low-level chronic contamination while maintaining low false alarm rate.The Phase II SBIR work will build upon the successful Phase I proof-of-concept demonst ...

Deep Learning for standoff detection of Special Nuclear Material (DLeN) applies the same deep learning techniques that allow computers to beat human performance in image recognition and the game of Go to detecting Special Nuclear Material. Spectral analysis and signal processing can in some cases be augmented by the use of much larger neural nets that conduct much deeper analysis of features of th ...

Prevention of the smuggling of special nuclear materials (SNMs) and other radioactive material into the United States is a key national security objective. It is desirable to have a system capable of stand-off detection to monitor and rapidly alert the presence of covert nuclear materials. In Phase I, Tanner in collaboration with the University of New Mexico have established the method of inferrin ...

To address the DTRA need for enhanced island-mode operation and strategies for defense critical infrastructure (DCI) in the event of commercial power grid loss or disruption due to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or high-power microwaves (HPMs), Physical Optics Corporation (POC) has developed an Optimizing power Availability and Sustainability in Islanded Sites (OASIS) methodology. This solution is ...

A preliminary design of a mobile receiver system for intra-cloud lightning detection, mapping, and tracking was completed and analyzed during the Phase I program. The direction-finding (DF) receiver design is small enough for use on small UAVs and utilizes the full VHF spectrum. The lightning Mapping Unmanned Sensor (LITMUS) design will be finalized, fabricated, assembled, and demonstrated durin ...

We propose to develop a system that can automatically detect, track, measure, and classify fish seen in video collected by stationary underwater cameras. Our approach makes use of a novel method for detecting motion that can mitigate false alarms due to swaying underwater vegetation. We propose a novel technique for tracking the fish in three spatial dimensions allowing for improved knowledge of ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: The Space weather-based Position error maps for TEC - On-line (SpoT-On) project will use GPS-GNSS based TEC data, integrated into the Global Assimilation of Ionospheric Measurements (GAIM) operational system at the Utah State University Space Weather Center to produce an order of magnitude improved TEC position correction maps. These will be publicly and globally accessible. A ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: A flow micro-photometer is proposed that can measure absorption and backscatter from single aquatic particles including phytoplankton, detritus and minerals. This instrument will make use of a novel adaptive diaphragm to define an analysis region of interest that exactly matches the size, shape and orientation of each particle being analyzed. A micro-fluidic chip will be used t ...