Award Data

The US Air Force has noted a need for a tool for broadband (300 nm2m) measurement of optical propagation properties such as absorption and scattering coefficients. A simple and inexpensive generic tool for extracting these properties from samples would be beneficial to many areas of both DoD and general scientific and industrial research. The present proposal seeks to develop a commercial instrume ...

A Battlefield Airman (BA) has one of the most challenging positions in the military. BA personnel are tasked with the dual roles of being warfighters as well as Combat Controllers, Pararescuemen, Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) members and Special Operations Weather Technicians often while behind enemy lines. These complex duties require high fidelity training. In some cases, such as pararesc ...

Oceanit proposes to develop a flexible broad-band optical device capable of measuring optical properties.

In this effort, tOSC and the University of New Mexico COSMIAC (Configurable Space Microsys- tems Innovation Applications Center) will combine to generate a Target-in-the-Loop (TIL) system concept that can simultaneously measure the strength of atmospheric turbulence and scintillation, as well as the refractivity occurring at the measurement time. For this system concept, we will leverage existing ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

ExoAnalytic Solutions is developing DEEPR (Deep Learning with Whole-Scene Contextual Reasoning for Object Characterization), an advanced multi-sensor multi-object classifier for integrated object characterization. The overall objective of DEEPR is to develop a suite of advanced, novel techniques that combine innovative advances in deep, hierarchical machine learning together with recurrent Deep L ...

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 ...

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 ...