Award Data

Photodetectors and focal plane arrays (FPAs) covering the middle-wave and longwave infrared (MWIR/LWIR) are of great importance in numerous NASA applications, including earth remote sensing for carbon-based trace gases, Lidar mapping for earth resource locating, and environment and atmosphere monitoring. Existing MWIR/LWIR photodetectors have a low operating temperature of below 77K. The requireme ...

SSCI and MIT propose to design, implement and test a comprehensive Integrated Mission Planning \ & Autonomous Control Technology (IMPACT) for Autonomous ISR missions employing collaborating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The main feature of the IMPACT system for Autonomous ISR is that it is based on robust real-time learning about dynamic and stochastic environments, and on a capability to autono ...

Aurora proposes to develop a vision-based subsystem for incorporation onto Mars vehicles in the air (VTOL) and on the ground. NOAMAD will be an embedded hardware device with associated firmware for payloadlimited UAVs, performing autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, guidance using bio-inspired methods, and communication of information between agents within the autonomous team. NOAMAD will tr ...

Exploration of planetary environments with current robotic technologies relies on human control and power-hungry active sensors to perform even the most elementary low-level functions. Ideally, a robot would be able to autonomously explore novel environments, memorize locations of obstacles or objects, learn about objects, build and update an environment map, and return to a safe location. All of ...

Boston Applied Technologies, Inc (BATi), together with Kent State University (KSU), proposes to develop a high sensitivity infrared (IR) imaging sensor without cooling, which covers a broad band from near infrared (NIR) to mid-infrared (mid-IR). It is based on a specific transparent functional material developed at BATi that has excellent pyroelectric effect, over strong absorption at NIR, mid-IR ...