Award Data

Food irradiation technology has attracted more attention in the past decade given that it can provide a sustainable solution on how to address pathogen contamination in food. X-ray irradiation has several advantages compared to other irradiation technologies including superior penetrating quality compared to electron beams, and considerably larger dose rate compared to gamma rays. However, the low ...

This work seeks to develop a receiver for high-power wireless energy transmission based on thermal-to-electric energy conversion using solid-state pyroelectric materials, which can convert time-varying temperature fluctuations to electricity, coupled with a modulated radiation source. The proposed receiver relies on a multilayer device architecture comprising nanometer-thick pyroelectric films tha ...

Optical power beaming systems have the potential to revolutionize energy supply for airborne military platforms, allowing networks of unmanned aircraft to operate aloft indefinitely.  To ensure safe and efficient optical power transfer, receiving optics must be designed to provide rigorous photon containment.  Stray reflections and scattered light must be minimized in order to ensure safety fo ...

DARPA and the US Department of Defense are interested in technologies which can enable a wireless energy web comprising multiple nodes to enhance military capabilities.  Wireless power transmission is difficult to scale to relevant powers and distances due to poor system efficiency.  For example, as transmission distances increase there is a severe reduction in system efficiency; at distances of ...

The current state-of-the-art for autonomous unmanned vehicles is limited in comms-denied situations, where operators cannot assist with coordination and situational reassessment.  Significant algorithmic development is needed for comms-challenged autonomous operations to achieve parity with operator-driven or manned equivalents, as autonomous agents are not currently equipped to anticipate and re ...

This proposal is for a Team Oriented Resource Management and Control (TORMAC) solution to the problem of distributed decision-making for resource constrained platforms in complex environments. As autonomous unmanned vehicles (UXV), sensor and manned vehicle capabilities have proliferated, it is more important to find ways of coordinating these assets towards common objectives in an evolving, commu ...

Page 2 of 2 The Department of Defense (DoD) must negotiate profit that is fair and reasonable to both the Buyer and the Seller. The DoD relies on profit to both attract the investment capital of innovative contractors and provide an incentive to perform efficiently. It relies heavily on the concept that the relationship between profit and risk should be proportional. At first, this seems to be a t ...

Memory sticks are a convenient mechanism for portable data storage and transfer. Unfortunately, the embedded microcontroller required to present raw flash as a USB peripheral exposes an attack surface that can enable privilege escalation on a host computer even in the presence of tamper-resistant device designs, data encryption, and host protections such as anti-virus software. We propose Twi ...

To achieve the requisite fast, dynamic thermal switching times, we postulate the use of a Photonic Crystal (PC) filament operating at l=1-2mm. Our electrically biased PC design will be super thin to allow for fast on-off intensity-switching. It will have a small thermal mass and exhibit laser-like input-output characteristics, i.e. “Planck laser”. We will provide a theoretical framework for ou ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison propose to develop a multilayer emissivity control coating (MECC) for active and passive thermal emission control. PSI will fabricate a thermochromic emissivity control coating based on vanadium dioxide (VO2) and validate its ability to modulate broadband thermal signature contrast by >10:1 with a switching time of 1 µs. We wil ...