Award Data

Identification and Significance of the Problem or Opportunity: The meat processing infrastructure is declining and aging across the United States leaving small farms with limited poultry, natural pork, and ruminant processing options. Work to rehabilitate existing but aged processing establishments utilizing energy efficiencies and renewable energy design to increase the profitability is needed. B ...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are primary drivers of global climate change. Hence there is a crucial need to quantify their sources and sinks. A powerful method to constrain source and sink strengths is the analysis of the relative proportions of isotopic variants of GHG’s in atmospheric samples like those collected globally by NOAA’s Cooperative Air Sampling Network. Measurements that are ca ...

During the Phase I program, Aurora conducted a comprehensive survey of potential platforms that included government owned and furnished UAVs and manned aircraft as well as Aurora’s Centaur Optionally Piloted Aircraft (OPA). The survey concluded, in part, that UAVs offer a significant improvement in data collection capability when compared to manned aircraft that are currently fielded by NOAA. ...

The significant gap in the healthcare services available to rural seniors is well supported by prior research. Frequently, rural seniors must travel long distances regardless of weather conditions to healthcare facilities. The senior's family members often worry about their loved ones and may not get accurate information regarding their health and behaviors, and falls, missed meds, and nutriti ...

Most citrus is harvested by hand. The resulting high cost in the U.S. is a burden to growers and positions them at a disadvantage to overseas competitors with low labor costs. Automated methods are needed to ensure the long-term viability and prosperity of the U.S. citrus industry. Energid Technologies proposes a new harvesting approach that combines robotic technologies with the efficiency of mas ...

Currently deployed full motion video (FMV) sensors provide crucial real-time situational awareness, but suffer from limited field of view and lack of geographical context. Charles River proposes a system to augment current FMV displays with geographic information and real-time intelligence overlays to provide users with a better understanding of video content in the context of the battlefield. In ...

There are currently no inexpensive, expendable air-deployed monitoring systems (Dropsondes) that measure atmospheric data and oceanographic as a function of depth. These are important data in predicting the intensity and path of hurricanes. Boston Engineering proposes to provide NOAA with a solution to this challenge with the Multi-Purpose Above Surface/Below Surface Expendable Dropsonde (MASED) p ...

Commercial farms growing high value fruits and vegetables use shade structures to create protected environments. These growers benefit from bigger yields, better quality produce, fewer pests, timed crop growth, and resource conservation. Unfortunately, shade structure use is limited for many small and medium size farms who lack economy of scale. Commercial shade structures available today are very ...

This Phase II technology pursuit is a follow-on research and development effort to USSOCOM’s Phase I SBIR Contract No. H92222-07-P-0051. As the result of this follow-on Phase II effort, Agiltron shall provide and demonstrate two (2) very high resolution, low power and low cost imagers that collect long wave infrared (LWIR) radiation and that produce imagery of a target object. BENEFITS: The Gove ...

Domestic US aquaculture is moving toward fishmeal replacement in aquafeeds with a variety of alternative protein sources including plant-based, terrestrial and marine proteins. In our Phase I work we showed the feasibility of modifying the protein quality of several alternate protein sources, specifically animal byproduct meals, and its potential significant impacts on marine fish production. Th ...