Award Data

TRACLabs Inc. has worked with NASA to create indoor/outdoor, vision-based leader-following systems for sparse, extra-terrestrial environments. Brown University's Robotics Group has demonstrated leader-following and gesture recognition in high-traffic, dynamic, indoor environments using active lidar sensing. We propose to combine our technologies in order to create a passive sensing system that w ...

Infoscitex and Columbia University propose to develop an automated blood component separation system that can quickly and automatically separate blood into three components for the US Army to use under field conditions. In this Phase I program, the team will prove the feasibility of separating whole blood into RBC, platelet rich plasma and acellular plasma using a high volume microfluidic technolo ...

The proliferation of social media technologies has provided a promising new source of information for intelligence analysts. Effective use of this data could provide insight into the evolution of social networks, identification of communication patterns that lead to events of interest, and analysis of relevant socio-cultural factors and trends. However, intelligence analysts frequently have diffic ...

This will facilitate the development of remedial approaches for existing facilities and assist in planning new facilities, logistics, and procedures to protect the environment without impairing critical mission functionality. The commercial application will include software distribution and updates.

A stand-off mid-IR based system offers great promise for the detection of chemical, biological or explosive (CBE) agents. Such a system has yet to be realized due mostly to broad spectral features and interfering substances. In this proposal we will demonstrate the feasibility of a system that collects laser induced thermal emission (LITE) from a substance and identifies it as known CBE agent with ...

The Army has a clear need for a small unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) capable of autonomously accompanying a single soldier or vehicle. Such a UGV would help solve both logistical problems of soldiers needing to transport more equipment and supplies than they can carry in a backpack, and tactical problems of scouting unsafe areas. Multiple designs for such UGVs exist; however, they require active re ...

The Army desires carbon nanotube (CNT) based fibers with exceptional strength and stiffness to provide high performance composite materials. Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has demonstrated a method to fabricate continuous CNT from electrospun polymer nanofibers. Because these CNT are continuous, their mechanical strength is limited primarily to their defect population. During a Phase I program PSI w ...

The neurocognitive health of U.S. service members plays a vital role in the defense of the United States. It is critical to a service member"s effectiveness, to force readiness, and it is a key component of a service member"s successful reintegration into family life and society following deployment. Increased rates of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and psychological health problems experien ...

Physical Sciences Inc. proposes an innovative, filter free approach to rapidly concentrate and detect bacterial spores from large volumes of flowing water for the purpose of early warning detection of contaminated potable water supplies against low concentration biological pathogens. Our approach builds on previous concentration work to study the feasibility of optimizing this approach and lays t ...

The rapid ascent and adoption of social media as the dominant form of communication has led to significant analysis challenges. In particular, there is a gap in theoretically informed methods to analyze data mined and collected from social media. One primary cause of this gap is the lack of fusing structural sources of information (e.g. social network topology) with non-structural sources (message ...