Award Data

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 ...

Currently, deployed medics must transport, maintain and be resupplied with liquid-based medications and materials that are heavy, expensive to transport, perishable and may require refrigeration. Many medications and materials are or will be available in

We will develop a series of object manipulation primitives to pick up and assemble standard mechanical parts such as screws, gears and pulleys that can be configured without any programming skills. Building up on a smart robotic gripper, 3D perception and machine learning algorithms, we will design a graphical user interface that allows an user to label arbitrary 3D objects, identify assembly poin ...

We propose the design of an optical instrument package capable of making cloud observations and deployable on a CubeSat. The design will be based on decades of research in cloud remote sensing and each spectral channel will be comprised of a commercial-off-the-shelf camera and a spectral filter as needed. The base design will be comprised of three channels, two in the shortwave infrared and one in ...

Enabling BLOS operations in the National Airspace System is largely an issue of improved sensing. Under the UTM rules, BLOS operations require performance authorization from the FAA centered around navigation, communications, sharing of intent, avoiding other aircraft, and connecting to the FAA in near real-time. The current plan initially is for these performance metrics to be evaluated by the FA ...

Machine learning and unsupervised classification have been applied to seafloor classification and benthic mapping using multibeam echosounders (MBES), Light Ranging and Detection (LiDAR), airborne hyperspectral, underwater optical cameras, and satellite imagery. Regardless of the sensor, data dimensionality reduction is an integral processing step of seabed mapping workflows . The most commonly im ...

This proposal addresses subtopic 9.6.01, Low-cost Oceanic and Atmospheric Sensors and Observing Systems. It is proposed that two instruments for measuring atmospheric aerosols be commercialized to operate automatically and routinely. Both instruments have been used in research settings for many years and share several aspects of technology. They could both be commercialized with significant advant ...

TDAs proposes to develop a novel RF heating process for rewarming cryogenically preserved tissues and organs. TDAs approach is to optimize the RF frequency and power, along with the chemical composition, size and morphology of infused nanoparticles so that they heat tissue samples rapidly and uniformly. In this manner, the cryoprotectant solutions pass from the vitrified state to the liquid stat ...

Solar active regions have a major impact on space weather. Knowledge of active regions in the Sun’s far hemisphere can improve forecasts of impending solar storms and future UV irradiance variations that negatively impact spacecraft, communications, and navigation facilities, thus making knowledge of active region locations and strengths of great benefit to society. We will use algorithms based ...

Propagation Research Associates, Inc., (PRA) proposes to redesign our existing Enhanced Tropospheric Effects Compensation ground-based radio occultation (RO) measurement system, which was developed, prototyped, and demonstrated under previous SBIR contracts, for the purpose of optimizing cost and performance. Assimilation of space-based RO measurements into numerical weather models is a proven met ...