Award Data

A need exists for polarization interrogating and discriminating Ladar systems to detect and discriminate defilade targets. In the proposed effort, Aerius, and our partner at the University of Illinois, will apply photonic crystal technology to extend Aerius’ high power, high wall plug efficiency, Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) results to develop a stable polarization switched VC ...

Small satellites working in coordinated manner as part of a distributed constellation hold the promise to revolutionize DoD space operations. However, small satellites also have significant inherent limitations. Their size limits the types of sensors that they can accommodate. It also limits propulsion, power generation and attitude control capabilities. One way of overcoming some of these lim ...

Early detection of virulent infectious pathogens is critical to blocking the devastating epidemic spread of the pathogen and the potential harm this could have on our armed forces and general populations. In Phase I, we have utilized the state-of-the-art QuantiGene 2.0 technology to establish an assay for the sensitive quantification of SARS (epidemic spread in 2001) and assessing plasma DNA level ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase-II project will design, develop and integrate an effective and efficient motion blur elimination algorithm to Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) system by optimizing and implementing the algorithm proposed during the Phase-I investigation to FPGA. In addition, an image enhancement toolkit for ground station ...

The development of compact, ultra-low drive voltage optical phase modulators is a critical key component for passive antenna remoting applications, a strategic area, part of a number of current and upcoming DARPA initiatives. With the development of sufficiently low V-pi modulators, passive front-ends can be constructed with a low figure even for a moderate optical pumping power. The combination o ...

In this Phase II proposal, the main thrust is to build a hardware MCICD prototype, and validate the FAR/FNR through real vehicle testing. By leveraging the existing LADAR based sensing platform in CMU, we expect to shorten the development cycle and reduce the overall cost. Extensive real vehicle testing is expected both in staged scenarios and in normal traffic. In this Phase II program, we also p ...

A military without good leadership is a mob. Identification, preparation, guidance and mentoring of potential leaders are critical functions across all services. Leadership training and support can be substantially improved by refinement of theories and models on what constitutes good leadership, and what enables individual to be effective leaders. DoD needs better models of how leaders learn, ...

Ziva Corporation in collaboration with UCSB will assess the feasibility of developing a directly modulated polarization switching laser based on the Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) geometry with a 3dB frequency of at least 10 GHz. This will be a major breakthrough in the ability to cost effectively fabricate directly modulated lasers (even in 2-D arrays) with polarization diversity ...

The challenges faced by airborne and ground-based sensors in detecting, classifying, identifying, associating and tracking difficult moving targets, such as insurgent forces, operating in difficult terrain such as mountains and forests will be addressed. Our team will quantify the performance that can be achieved using multi-sensor, multi-spectral, and multi-platform techniques, where the sensors ...

The increasing use of video in force protection, autonomous vehicles reconnaissance, and surveillance in general has created a great demand for automated analysis and monitoring. It is infeasible to have humans monitoring and analyzing the vast amount of video used in such surveillance, and automated analysis yields hope to ease the burden and increase the amount of information extracted from col ...