Award Data

Fog and smog reduce visibility at sea, greatly impacting ship navigation and safety. Low visibility marine conditions decrease speed and safety of commercial fleets and increase costs through poor fuel load planning. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of maritime operations to the supply chain; therefore, decreasing associated cost and risk are of the utmost importance. Applied Ocean ...

"Jaia Robotics’ low-cost, micro-sized hybrid uncrewed surface/underwater vehicles called JaiaBotsTM can be deployed from the shore or vessels. The system enables truly affordable multivehicle operations that can be scaled to provide wide area synoptic data collection. In the proposed effort the project team will develop a JaiaBot which is air-deployable from sonobuoy launch tubes to collect atmo ...

A cloud based system for sharing bathymetric survey data collected by FarSounder customers is proposed as a way(1) to improve safety of navigation on our oceans, (2) to collect measurements for the broader scientific and maritime communities and (3) to generally explore and broadly share information about our oceans in fulfillment of ideas proposed in Topic 9.3 “The Changing Ocean”, and in acc ...

"Metron proposes to develop user-friendly software to promote understanding of impacts due to cascading climate hazards and extreme weather events, in collaboration with George Mason University (GMU). Climate and extreme weather (CEW) hazards pose significant risks to life and property. As extreme events become more prevalent, risks associated with cascading, compound events come to the fore, such ...

The goal for this Phase I research is to develop a stretchable dielectric ink that can be used for flexible applications. Printing electronics is a new and quickly growing alternative to traditionally manufactured electronics. Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) is a novel approach to electronic circuit manufacturing that aims to combine the best of printed and conventional electronics. FHE devices ...

Commercial buildings use 35% of the entire US energy output, and up to a third of that energy is wasted. Rapidly rising fuel costs, increasing concern about climate change, and policy directives from the Biden Administration are all driving the need for increased energy efficiency and the elimination of waste. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased public awareness of t ...

Face masks and respirators are frequently deployed in critical protective applications (such as medical and construction environments) where fit testing is not routinely performed before each shift. N95 and related testing protocols effectively assess filtration efficiency for respirators that remain tightly fitted throughout activity, but since these protocols prescribe sealing the tested product ...

The 21st century is the Age of the Network. Operators and clients of critical infrastructure networks are now vulnerable to cascading failures that they could not have seen coming. “Cascading” failure events remain a vital unsolved challenge as critical infrastructure network operators and regulators struggle to define and operationalize resilience, and measurement of interdependent network re ...

Prescribed burns are a critical aspect of land management, but they require vegetation data that is hard to obtain at high resolution and on the timescale required. Our autonomous UAV collects critical fire modeling variables through subcanopy flight, enabling rapid surveys for faster and safer burn planning. In Phase I, we proved the feasibility of mapping live fuel moisture content (LFMC) with s ...

The primary objective of this project is to improve awareness, safety and enjoyment for mariners in coastal and inland waters by the creation of a participatory sensor network (PSN) that facilitates sharing of marine observations with other mariners. We are adding a new degree of temporal fidelity to nautical charts and maps. The approach leverages volunteered geographic information to augment con ...