Award Data

In the US alone, 3 billion pounds of consumed fresh tomatoes are grown in greenhouse farms. These farms improve food security, require less land, and consume less resources; however, for these farms to operate, large labor forces are needed to maintain, harvest, and package the tomatoes. These jobs, though paying well above minimum wage, do not attract local workers and force farmers to use immigr ...

Current agriculture and off-road equipment requires the use of lubricants to ensure efficient operation of integral hydraulic and gear driven systems. The lubricants, either oils or greases, aid in reducing friction, dissipating heat, prevent oxidation, and seal of water and debris from vital areas of the equipment. During operation, equipment may have slight leaks or suffer catastrophic failures ...

As biodiesel production in the USA increases, bottlenecks in feedstock appear likely. Several companies have formed to investigate novel forms of conversion of lower cost feedstocks but all have found the same substantial hurdle, meeting the 15PPM sulfur specification of ASTM D6751. Numerous experiments have shown that low-cost fats, oils and greases may contain 300 - 500PPM sulfur and that no sin ...

The proposed research will evaluate the use of panoramic, street-level imagery to support and enhance community forestry. Similar to a windshield survey, these publicly available mapping resources can provide baseline data on tree species or genus, diameter, and condition that can be used to support future planting initiatives and best management practices. Furthermore, when combined with both man ...

Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. will develop a low-cost, high-efficiency condensation irrigation system to desalinate brackish water and provide affordable freshwater for agricultural applications. Solar thermal energy or low grade waste heat will be used to vaporize water from brackish water and humidify air; the hot humid air will then be sent to buried perforated condensation pipes and cond ...

There is growing consumer demand for "clean-label" food ingredients including color additives derived from natural sources. Colorant-related issues represent 3 of the top 10 concerns of consumers about food ingredients, and numerous food manufacturers and retailers have publically committed to removing synthetic food colors from their products. Fruit/vegetable-derived anthocyanins, carotenoids, an ...

In this project, the team will develop a prototype of History Maker, a virtual reality (VR) content creation tool, where students and teachers produce digital movies to be used as reports and/or presentations about particular historical topics. Within the platform, students will research primary sources documents, write scripts, and act scenes from history. Student work will be presented in VR to ...

Cooperative robots can explore the surface of planets with higher efficiency and lower mission risk, perform novel and precise resource and science surveys, and gather and share resources and information with other assets to bring planetary exploration. In order to work together more efficiently and effectively, robots must understand their location relative to their peers, which is challenged in ...

We propose to develop a method to effectively utilize the massive amount of image and range data that cameras and laser scanners can generate for an autonomous navigation system. Our innovative approach is to use deep learning to detect and segment only the most useful portions of the data and to use that to build better 3D models. We have proven methods for building accurate 3D models of the en ...

In contrast to the standard cold reservoir Variable Conductance Heat Pipe (VCHP) where for tight thermal control an electrical heater is used for the reservoir (wicked), Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc (ACT) developed a hot reservoir VCHP with the reservoir thermally coupled to the evaporator. This novel feature will provide a tight temperature control capability without the need for control po ...