Award Data

Printed integrated circuits (PIC) allow us to take advantage of substrates that otherwise could not be utilized in traditional fabrication techniques. This enables the production of circuits that are transparent, flexible, and conformal, opening a wide range of new applications for large area sensors, integrated/embedded electronics, medical diagnostics, and health monitoring. Leveraging our exten ...

AGILTRON proposes to realize a new MEMS energy harvester capable of powering in-situ micro sensors and their wireless modules under harsh operational environments. The design overcomes current shortcomings and achieves sufficient power output, reliability, miniature size, and low cost. The approach incorporates several innovations including stable electromagnetic structure, efficient power generat ...

Certain lanthanide halides have significantly higher light output than NaI:Tl, the comparison standard for scintillators, plus other important properties, including fast decay times and excellent proportionality. Unfortunately, lanthanide halides grown by traditional melt processes have high production costs and limited availability. Crystals are usually limited to about 5 cm x 5 cm, right cylinde ...

In Phase I of UBER-HEB, the Aptima team made significant progress designing a non-von Neumann hierarchical universal learning system based on the Ersatz Brain Architecture (EBA). An experiment using an EBA implementation showed emergence of module assemblies, a critical step in validation. In Phase II, we propose to focus sharply on an important, well-characterized problem ideally suited to the EB ...

Decision support tools for target identification and alert generation depend upon the classification of static and moving objects. Existing methods for object classification rely primarily on static information available in single-frame images. The data from long-range video surveillance assets are usually not sufficient to distinguish the objects from one another, and even if high-resolution data ...

Operations centers used for incident response, tactical military activities, and air traffic management can all be characterized as having multiple teams of individuals, each with defined responsibilities, interacting with people and systems within and outside of their organization to enable continuous mission success. Effective coordination and collaboration is critical in these organizations; ho ...

Infrared (IR) detection approaches have required significant development of highly sensitive arrays for a wide range of area. How to engineer materials to achieve high IR sensitivity and be deposited onto lenses, goggles, or other substrates are challenging and important to military and commercial applications. For many military missions, a cost-effective, ultra-compact, and efficient infrared d ...

Busek Co. Inc. and the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) of Pennsylvania State University propose to develop a metal hydride based power system for High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft. This system will produce mechanical or electrical energy that can be used to drive a propeller. In Phase I, we selected the most promising propellant combination and designed a system around it. We estim ...

It is proposed to develop a novel process for growth of high quality CZT crystals for nuclear detection applications. Currently the THM process is the technology of choice for production of high quality CZT crystals. This process, however, suffers from extremely low growth rates. The development effort proposed here will seek to increase the crystal growth rate by 5-10 times the current levels ...

Modern full-spectrum operations require that military decision-makers possess an understanding of the human social, cultural, and behavioral (HSCB) dynamics of a region so they can plan effective courses of action (COAs). To ensure that COAs are congruent with the HSCB aspects of an intended audience while effectively achieving military objectives, decision-makers need to engage expert analysts to ...