Award Data

Air management solutions capable of reducing heat and moisture burden are not suitable for integration in wearable respiratory protection systems due to excessive weight, volume, and power requirements of existing technologies. Vibrant Composites proposes applying its unique uMECS manufacturing technology towards development of an ultra-lightweight and power efficient miniature blower. Fundamental ...

A critical step in the extraction of elements from ore, especially rare earth elements that are found in complex minerals, is separation. Froth flotation is a highly versatile method for physically separating particles based on differences in the ability of air bubbles to selectively adhere to specific mineral surfaces in a mineral/water slurry. The particles with attached air bubbles are then ca ...

As analysts and operators move from data to insights, tools are needed for supervisory control, command and control, and intelligence analysis. Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) requires the ability to navigate and interpret mounds of data to produce actionable decisions. Through the Urban Telepresence program, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is redefining a concept of ...

It is not likely that an autonomous system can be programmed with all the information it requires to perform every mission or every variation of every contingency within the near future. One way to address this issue is to provide user-friendly means to teach or program a robot to add to its autonomous capability. This proposal focuses on the physical aspects of the robot performance, manipulat ...

Recent advancements in sensor simulation tools [2] have improved our ability to model radar, lidar, camera, and GPS with software/hardware in the loop. Of course, our ability to model the physics of heavy trucks [3] is quite mature as well. To address the challenge of developing the STE, we will provide our autonomy algorithms as Government Furnished Equipment (GFE). The focus of this topic ...

Leveraging on Agiltron’s industry leading development of optical MEMS devices and the PI’s experience with FTIR spectrometer design, we propose to develop a new class of high performance compact and rugged FTIR spectrometers for LWIR optical range. The design is based on the MEMS lamellar mirror technique. Although this approach is not new, it has not yet been efficiently applied to LWIR, and ...

Longwave infrared (LWIR, 8-12µm) focal plane arrays (FPAs) play an important role in hyperspectral chemical and biological sensing. Existing thermal detectors are unable to meet the high sensitivity and fast response requirements of many hyperspectral chemical and biological sensing applications. Photodetectors and FPAs based on photon excited electron generation process can fulfill the speed and ...

OPTRA proposes the development of a high speed resonant Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer for surface contaminant detection via thermal luminescence. The system will generate 10,000 spectra per second over the 7-14 m spectral range at 8 cm-1 spectral resolution; the NESR is projected at 4×10-9 W/(cm2•ster•cm-1) over a 100 s integration time. The key to the system is a res ...

Trace detection usually requires a vapor concentrator that collects dilute analytes from a vapor sample and delivers them at a higher concentration to the detector. Conventional vapor concentrators tend to use either cryogenics, where vapors are concentrated on a cooled surface and then desorbed via flash heating, or sorbent technology, such as zeolites, where vapors are absorbed before flash-hea ...

Spectral Sciences Inc. proposes to develop a sensor for real-time trace-level analysis of complex multicomponent gas mixtures containing Chemical Weapon (CW) agents and interferents. The approach is based on the combination of a digitally controlled widely tunable quantum cascade laser source and an advanced photoacoustic signal transducer. In Phase I, Spectral Sciences Inc. has demonstrated the ...