Award Data

Proposed is an investigation into the use of flexible, extremely strong and tough, superelastic Nitinol shape memory alloy as a means of dramatically improving puncture resistance for personnel body armor. The Nitinol material is proposed as a surface material or coating for reinforcement or organic fiber fabrics and/or composites or aramid and UHMW polyethylene used in the current body armor sys ...

Presently, scanning and zooming of imaging optics is achieved with bulky mechanical gimbals or using multiple focal plane arrays and associated optics to cover the wide field of view. These approaches are not only expensive in terms of power, size and weight, but also costly. Alternatively, the use of liquid crystal (LC) lenses, LC spatial light modulators and LC scanners in zooming and scanning ...

This SBIR will explore and develop new automated methods for dynamic fault tolerance in defense electronic systems. The research will investigate using the software of digital signal processor operating systems to pro-actively map defective operations to remaining processors. In the past, fault tolerance has relied on passive redundancy to extend operating life. With software, a simple re-start ...

MicroDexterity Systems was founded by Steve Charles, MD to develop systems for dexterity enhancement for microsurgery; a concept he originated in the mid 80's. Dexterity enhancement is a subset of tele-operation. The MDS mission statement was broadened in 1994 to address the problem of non-ferromagnetic tele-operation for intra-operative magnetic resonance imaging frequently called image guided ...

This proposal is to design a standard collaborative tool that will link together geographically separated experts at specialized workstations with disparate data, source materials, algorithms and domain knowledge, for the purpose of creating geospecific virtual worlds. The proposed standard collaborative tools will be based on the proven functionality of the Multi-dimensional, user-oriented Synth ...

Events including the Oklahoma CIty bombing and the Sarin attack in the Tokyo subway have emphasized the vulnerability of personnel, both military and civilian, to unexpected attack with conventional explosives and chemical substances. To combat this threat requires portable, low cost sensor systems capable of detecting a variety of dangerous materials at extremely low concentrations. Such a tech ...

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Our commercial and military fleets operate safely but at a great cost. Downtime for structural inspections, elaborate sustainment equipment, long maintainer hours, expensive in-depot repair, continuous spectrum monitoring, and extensive component testing have effectively reduced the rates of structure-related accidents, but the costs are overwhelming. DARPA has proposed changing the paradigm of ai ...