Award Data

A Battlefield Airman (BA) has one of the most challenging positions in the military. BA personnel are tasked with the dual roles of being warfighters as well as Combat Controllers, Pararescuemen, Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) members and Special Operations Weather Technicians often while behind enemy lines. These complex duties require high fidelity training. In some cases, such as Pararescuem ...

ColdQuanta, in partnership with Dr. Zoya Popovic at the University of Colorado at Boulder, proposes to develop a three-dimensional quantum-enhanced radio-frequency (RF) signal sensor and direction finder. Our approach combines Rydberg-atom-based RF electrometry and discrete lens arrays (DLAs) of planar antennas. The DLA will serve as a Fourier optic for an incident wave, and a Rydberg-atom RF elec ...

To address the challenge of long-term tracking, through extended occlusions and significant appearance changes, we propose to continue developing DC-CAT, a Deep Convolutional neural network (CNN) based Confuser-Aware high value target (HVT) Tracker.The DC-CAT system combines a state-of-the-art CNN-based adaptive HVT tracker with a CNN-based pre-trained generic target detector, in a deep-feature-ai ...

Max-IR Labs LLC, in collaboration with UT Dallas, successfully demonstrated construction and operation of a prototype Infrared Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscopy (IR-SNOM) instrument for high-spatial-resolution thermal mapping of small heat sources, in particular Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) facets, during Phase I.Preliminary data demonstrated feasibility of implementation of this instrument an ...

Current scene projection hardware is challenged to simultaneously meet the requirements for high peak temperature (> 2000K), high resolution (2Kx2K), response time < 4 ms, cryogenic and temporally uniform photon flux. MEMS, Resistor arrays, liquid crystals, and photonic crystals all suffer in one or more areas. MEMS suffer from flicker and low dynamic range. Resistor arrays suffer from low frame r ...

Recent technology advances have enabled the simulation community to achieve greater realism in virtual training environments, including physics-based simulated sensor views. As new methods for sensor view generation are developed, the lack of readily available supporting data to populate these specialized techniques limits their implementation. Currently the capability is not available to efficien ...

Structural reactive materials (SRMs) or multifunctional energetic materials offer the ability to combine the high energy release rates of traditional high explosives with structural strength.When successfully formulated they can lead to light-weight, high-performance and hitherto inaccessible designs of munitions. The key feature of structural energetic materials (SEMs), perhaps even more so than ...

Thermoelastic structures pose a critical challenge to designers due to the inherent design dependence of thermal loading on structural thickness. This is further exacerbated by structural nonlinearity due to in-plane, and more importantly, the out-of-plane bending deformation that further increases the effective loading on the structure. During Phase I of this project, we have added significant ne ...

High speed air vehicles operate at material strength performance limits and are at significant risk when subjected to additional localized heating that can result in softening, pitting and burn-through the material and potentially change the vehicle structural profile. These effects degrade aerodynamic performance. The team of CFDRC and UDRI proposed to develop, validate and deliver a comprehensiv ...

As both the response speed and sensitivity of thermal imagers have improved significantly over recent years, new IRSP systems are needed to provide greater dynamic range and faster response speeds. Addressing these issues, as well as producing a cost effective and modular IRSP system will be critical for providing quality scene projection for the next generation of infrared imagers. To address the ...