Award Data

In today’s Urban-Warfare Command and Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C2ISR) environment, current sensor platforms have a limited operational capability due to power consumption and recharge times. Many times these sensor packages are found to be unsuitable for many battlefield environments due strictly to their endurance limitations. Much of the research done to date has ...

The authors establish a novel metrology system capable of determining the pose of a robotically-mounted End of Arm Tool (EOAT) in Six Degrees of Freedom (6-DOF) to a capability better than True Position (TP) 0.010 in. The metrology system consists of low-cost, modular components in the form of motorized gimbals that steer laser beams onto robot-affixed, photosensitive chips typical of those found ...

Ultra-light weight, highly conductive carbon nanotube sheets that can be bonded to graphite composites while also conducting in the GHz region have potential to broadly improve EMI/ESD systems. These materials have additional applications including: EMI cable shielding, EMI/EMP electronics protection, preventing unwanted EMI emissions, highly conductive ground planes, and ESD layers. This proposa ...

In phase II we will develop a prototype TD-THz step/gap mismatch measurement system. This system will be able to measure the sub-surface ground-plane step and gap dimensions on the seams of panels on the F-35 aircraft. In phase I, we demonstrated the ability of the TD-THz method to measure the dimensions of the ground-plane step and gap through otherwise opaque boots and coatings. The first app ...

The proposed effort will design, build, and demonstrate a revolutionary and long overdue advancement to space communications. Through the use of native IP, Innoflight will introduce seamless networked communications through space vehicle links, ground stations, the mission operations center and end users. Our proposed solution includes a powerful link encoder, IP/HDLC, Type 1 HAIPE encryption, G ...

This effort will provide automated GPS outage and degradation characterization (e.g., environment or man-made) tools based upon GPS satellite to site Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) data, Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) scintillation cloud predictions, and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) event tracks. Then detect and track relationships of t ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) demonstrated in Phase I that it is possible to design a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) which is robust to collisions by using techniques similar to what insects use to recover from collisions while still in flight. Observational studies of insects colliding with objects (high speed films of instrumented insects) conducted at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory show that the ...

In Phase I Ceebus demonstrated the feasibility of an underwater, acoustic, direct-sequence spread-spectrum communication architecture, including actual data transfers and decoded message recovery. All of the communication algorithms were post-processed and communication was performed with a single piezo transducer. Prototype development is the next step in delivering a system that offers real-time ...

Mobility Air Force assets deployed in forward positions are vulnerable to enemy air defenses and require protection, typically provided by high-power standoff/support jammer aircraft loitering outside the range of enemy missiles while radiating high-power jamming waveforms at large region of enemy territory. However, the position of the jammer may be such that the jamming power is directed at the ...

MDA, Air Force, and Raytheon require dimensionally stable and survivable SiC substrates and coatings for the Space and Precision Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS/PTSS) Track Sensor Telescope(s). System requirements include: operation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), surviving a nuclear event, optical performance across the 0.6-12 microns wavebands (VIS/MWIR/LWIR), and operational temperatures from ...