Award Data

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are increasingly seen as a cornerstone in developing the future Defense infrastructure and it is critical that they collaborate efficiently and execute complex missions in denied environments. Although great progress has been made in GPS-denied navigation, the target handoff problem in GPS-denied environments has not been extensively studied. In this problem, a trac ...

ABSTRACT: Space superiority needs protected tactical space communications with dynamic spectrum sharing, routing adaptation and interference mitigations against kinetic and non kinetic threats. The main focus of this project is to develop game-theoretic analytics and frameworks to support the Air Forces autonomy science & technology strategy (e.g., "deterrence" posture which in turn may be enabled ...

Advanced imaging techniques and, novel intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) methods are of great interest to the U.S. Air Force and other Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, but associated high-costs of III-V and II-VI MWIR and SWIR materials prohibit their practical widespread deployment and integration with other optoelectronic devices. In this program, we intend to investigate ...

High speed air vehicles operate at material strength performance limits and are at significant risk when subjected to additional localized heating that can result in softening, pitting and burn-through the material and potentially change the vehicle structural profile. These effects degrade aerodynamic performance. The team of CFDRC and UDRI proposed to develop, validate and deliver a comprehensiv ...

Coating materials and coating methods used to protect U.S. military aircraft and weapon systems from corrosion and wear are in need of environmentally benign alternatives in order to keep up with dynamic regulations associated with environment, safety, and occupational health. Thus, the Air Force is supporting research to develop alternatives to the dangerous materials identified on the OSD Emergi ...

ColdQuanta, in partnership with Dr. Zoya Popovic at the University of Colorado at Boulder, proposes to develop a three-dimensional quantum-enhanced radio-frequency (RF) signal sensor and direction finder. Our approach combines Rydberg-atom-based RF electrometry and discrete lens arrays (DLAs) of planar antennas. The DLA will serve as a Fourier optic for an incident wave, and a Rydberg-atom RF elec ...

Current scene projection hardware is challenged to simultaneously meet the requirements for high peak temperature (> 2000K), high resolution (2Kx2K), response time < 4 ms, cryogenic and temporally uniform photon flux. MEMS, Resistor arrays, liquid crystals, and photonic crystals all suffer in one or more areas. MEMS suffer from flicker and low dynamic range. Resistor arrays suffer from low frame r ...

To understand how insects and crustaceans sense and process light fields, researchers need a projection system that provides realistic wide field of view (FOV), high-speed imagery from UV to red (320-650nm) that includes polarization control. Insects and crustaceans have vastly different visual acuity and wavelength response from humans. In addition, some can sense polarization. Therefore, commerc ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the research group of Professor Richard Osgood at Columbia University propose to develop a compact optical transceiver based on devices fabricated on a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) platform. The recent development of novel integrated structures in silicon including waveguides, resonators, and photodetectors will enable dramatic reductions in size, ...

To address the challenge of long-term tracking, through extended occlusions and significant appearance changes, we propose to continue developing DC-CAT, a Deep Convolutional neural network (CNN) based Confuser-Aware high value target (HVT) Tracker.The DC-CAT system combines a state-of-the-art CNN-based adaptive HVT tracker with a CNN-based pre-trained generic target detector, in a deep-feature-ai ...