Award Data

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices can provide an effective avenue of communication for individuals with communicative disabilities. A core component of many AAC systems is dynamic word prediction, in which a list of probable words is autonomously generated and presented for immediate user selection. Current word prediction systems employ algorithms which do not take full a ...

Many speech- and visually-impaired individuals can benefit from text-to-speech systems for unlimited vocabulary speech synthesis. The demands on these systems are especially severe in the case of voice output communication aids (VOCAs) for speech-impaired individuals, since the speech produced substitutes for a speaker's own voice. VOCA quality thus depends not only on intelligibility, but on th ...

Mission Research Corporation proposes the development of a unique FPGA (field programmable gate array) for applications in space and other military and civilian environments requiring the versatility of reconfigurability with retention of the configuration in an unpowered state. The FPGA will be capable of being configured once and retaining that configuration for a minimum of 10 years even with ...

CURRENT ATTEMPTS TO USE THE PLASMA OPENING SWITCH (POS) FOR DECADE HAVE NOT YET BEEN ENTIRELY SUCCESSFUL DUE TO THE APPARENT INABILITY OF THE SWITCH TO OPEN EFFICIENTLY TO A HIGH-IMPEDENCE LOAD. RESEARCH DIRECTED TOWARD IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POS IN THE LONG-CONDUCTION TIME REGIME HAS BEEN FRUSTRATED BY THE INABILITY OF COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS TO OPERATE IN THE PARAMETER REGIMES OF INTEREST ...

THERE IS AN ESTABLISHED NEED FOR A SIMPLE ROBUST TRANSDUCER TO MEASURE PARTICLE VELOCITY IN SEVERE BLAST AND SHOCK ENVIRONMENTS SUCH AS NUCLEAR AND HIGH EXPLOSIVE TESTS. A GAGE CONCEPT IS PROPOSED FOR DEVELOPMENT, BASED ON THE PROVEN MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLES USED IN THE HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL DX GAGE, BUT RECONFIGURED MECHANICALLY AND ELECTRICALLY TO WITHSTAND THE HARSH SHOCK ENVIRONMENTS. THE CONCEPT RE ...

HIGH RANGE (200,000 G) ACCELEROMETERS ARE THE ONLY TRANSDUCERS THAT PROVIDE THE REQUIRED LONG-TERM DATA IN THE ENVIRONMENTS OF INTEREST TO THE BLAST AND SHOCK COMMUNITY. THESE GAGES HAVE A VERY LARGE DYNAMIC RANGE AND NOISE OFTEN MASKS THE LATE TIME (BUT EXTREMELY IMPORTANT) DATA. WE PROPOSE TO DEVELOP A CLOSE COUPLED LOGARITHMIC GAIN SIGNAL CONDITIONING SYSTEM THAT WILL CORRECT THE LATE TIME NOIS ...

THE CLOSED-CAPTIONING CONSUMER DECODERS (TELE-CAPTION I&II) ARE HIGHLY DEVELOPED UNITS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE IN QUANTITY PRODUCTION. TELE-CAPTION II HAS BEEN MARKETED AT ABOUT $200RETAIL. COST REDUCTION FOR A REPLACEMENT DECODER WILL REQUIRE COST REDUCTIONS IN EACH OF THE SUB-UNIT COMPONENTS SUCH AS TUNER, IF-DEMODULATOR, IN THE DECODER CIRCUITS AND UL APPROVALS AS WELL. THE USE OF A CONSUMER/VIDEO ...

CURRENT NUMERICAL COMPUTATIONS TO DESCRIBE NUCLEAR GROUND SHOCK ENVIRONMENTS, NUCLEAR CRATER FORMATION, IMPACT DYNAMICS AND PENETRATION MECHANISMS PRESENTLY EMPLOY EULERIAN-BASED FINITE DIFFERENCE CODES BECAUSE OF THEIR ABILITY TO MODEL THE MASS FLUX PHENOMENA IN TRACKING MATERIAL MOVEMENT THROUGH THE DISCRETIZED SPACE. THE FINITE DIFFERENCE CODES SUFFER IN COMPARISON TO FINITE ELEMENT CODES, HOWE ...

THE PURPOSE OF THIS PROPOSAL IS TO DEVELOP AN IMPROVED READER FOR PRINTED TEXT. THE PRESENT STANDARD IN THIS FIELD IS THE KURZWEIL READING MACHINE. THIS MACHINE HAS SEVERAL DISADVANTAGES, MOST NOTABLY ITS PHYSICAL SIZE AND WEIGHT, ITS COST, AND ITS POOR PERFORMANCE WITH CERTAIN SPECIALIZED TYPES OF FORMATS AND FONTS (E.G., CHEMICAL JOURNALS AND FADED PRINT ON DAMAGED PAPER). IT IS PROPOSED HERE TO ...

THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IS TO INVESTIGATE COST EFFECTIVE (LOW COST/HIGH PERFORMANCE) PRODUCTS AND APPLICATIONS DESIGNED TO INTERFACE WITH A PERSONAL COMPUTER, WHICH WILL VOCALIZE UPON A GIVEN COMMAND WORDS OR PROCESSES WHICH HAVE BEEN STORED IN THE COMPUTER'S MEMORY OR ARE DISPLAYED ON THE COMPUTER MONITOR. THE PRODUCT GOAL IS THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A PRINT ...