Award Data

In this Phase I Project ACTA and its partners will demonstrate the feasibility of developing a risk-based mission path planning (RB MPP) approach. Areas of interest to the Navy where a RB MPP address critical needs include enabling less restrictive UAS operations within the US National and Foreign Airspaces. The Phase I will demonstrate feasibility with a two-step approach. The first step will dem ...

Enabling operators to command and control multiple UAVs will require higher levels of supervisory control, enabling vehicles to operate autonomously during larger portions of each mission. For the foreseeable future, however, critical portions of each mission will require operators to apply their superior knowledge, judgment, and skills to assess the situation, monitor execution more closely and, ...

OKSI and Professor Matthew Taylor will develop the Cognitive Adaptation and Mission Optimization (CAMO) command and control tool for teams of UAS platforms. CAMO will incorporate existing databases (e.g., NASA population maps, FAA airspace maps, etc.) as well as real-time data from UAS into a learning-based cognitive control solution that maximizes mission performance while minimizing risk for a t ...

SA Photonics is pleased to propose the SOCRATES free space optical communication and sensing system featuring the Photonic Optical Multicast Mast Unit (POMMU). SOCRATES enables 360 degree multicast capability of high bandwidth communication in addition to threat search and tracking capability. SA Photonics will team with Prof. Michael Kudenov at North Carolina State University who will investigate ...

Systems that operate in constrained environments depend on the acoustics in several ways. Harbor defense systems detect intruders (peopleand/or vessels) by either listening for their noises (passively) or by pinging on them and detecting their echoes (actively). Furthermore, suchsystems may also form the equivalent of an underwater cell phone network using sound to carry the information. The acous ...

Navy needs a real-time graph embedding tool for analyzing huge graphs (millions of nodes and billions of edges) from diverse sources. However, current approaches cannot provide dynamic and scalable graph analytics to signify the military value of tactical data. In this project, InfoBeyond advocates EStreaming (Embedding & Streaming) for scalable and efficient graph streaming. EStreaming promotes b ...

Persistent tracking of high-value targets is of great interest for reconnaissance and surveillance applications. In recent work, deep neural networks have demonstrated excellent performance on the popular Visual Object Tracking (VOT) challenge; however, these algorithms have not been tested on applications of interest to the Air Force, such as ground vehicle tracking in video recorded from Unmanne ...

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies covering a broad range of technologies and processes have been under continuous and accelerating development since the 80s. While there are still fundamental hurdles such as low production rates and small sizes, AM holds tremendous promise in terms of revolutionizing manufacturing. Recent trends include direct-printing and incorporating sensors and electr ...

Adaptive Optics allow ground-based astronomical observatories to overcome atmospheric distortion limited observation by using natural and artificial guide stars to measure the distortion. Sodium-layer guide stars provide near all-sky coverage for high resolution astronomy. Over the last 20 years, Optically Pumped Semiconductor Laser (OPSL), also referred to as Vertically Extended Cavity Surface ...

During the last two decades, vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) have emerged as excellent high-power laser sources that combine diode-pumping, broad-pump tolerance, wavelength selectivity, narrow linewidth, broad tunability, high beam quality, compactness, and efficiency into one attractive package. These characteristics make them an ideal candidate for use as more economic ...