Award Data

The TRP-SBIR project will address the synthesis and characterization of single crystal relaxor ferroelectrics for high performance bio-medical transducers. The ability to grow single crystals of various relaxor-based compositions with specific crystallographic orientations offers piezoelectric, dielectric and electro-mechanical properties not achieveable in ploycrystalline PZT ceramics. Limitati ...

Fully autonomous, taskable robots for use in unconstrained environments are still a dream rather than a reality because of a host of problems, including capabilities of existing sensors, effectors, and control/planning software. Indeed, concepts of operations for robot use are tending toward robots collaborating directly with humans, in relationships similar to bomb squad dogs. Fortunately, enough ...

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The objective of this proposal is to investigate a set of software tools that aid researchers (i.e. scientists, inventors, designers, planners, or investors) in solving complex problems over large sets of data. The DiscoveryToolsTM system will provide acustomer-centered approach to computer automation. The customer (i.e. researcher) encodes problem-solving strategies through an easy-to-use graph ...

Some polymers exhibit Seebeck coefficients that are 100 to 1000 times higher than those of semiconductors used in today's thermoelectric devices. Unfortunately these polymers have low electrical conductivity that results in a figure-of-merit, ZT, that is much lower than do the conventional semiconductors. Attempts to increase the conductivity of polymers by doping or micro particle addition have ...

Development of new short-wave infrared imaging sensors with signal processing electronics on the same substrate is critical for a number of military and commercial applications. The objective of this research is to develop a new generation of Ge-on-Si p-n heterojunction photodiodes that will culminate in a demonstration of a 64 x 64-pixel infrared imaging array. These photodiodes, whose feas ...

K2T, Inc. proposes to design and demonstrate an interactive system capable of reconstructing 3-D models from ordinary video image sequences. Although many people are currently working in the field of shape from motion, no one has yet developed a commercially viable system for reconstructing 3-D models from videotape. The objective of this Phase I research is to design such a system. The system ...

Laser Technology Inc. (LTI) proposes a Phase II SBIR research project to further develop a Compact Shearography System, Analysis Method and Software for micro-crack detection in concrete. There is an urgent need to detect and characterize fine cracks in concrete that form because of various damage mechanisms including alkali-silicate reaction, delayed ettringite formation or frost damage. Fine s ...

The accessibility of information on the Internet could be dramatically increased by providing users with meaningful semantically rich visualizations of the relationships among diverse information sources and data. However, most attempts to visualize the web have focused on its superficial structure rather than the meaning of its contents. Similarly, most current software tools provide only narro ...

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