Award Data

the goal of driver's education is to provide students with the skills necessary to safely and effectively operate a motor vehicle. While effective training has been implemented since the 1930s, research suggest opportunities to enhance driver hazard anticipation and avoidance, which could in turn dramatically impact public safety. Hazard-related training has traditionally been difficult to accom ...

Over the last decade, it has been noted that offshore wind energy resource development could prove extensively valuable in many areas of our nation’s growth, including continued diversification of our energy supply, more options for cost-competitive electricity in coastal and Great Lakes regions, and economical stimulation through new and lasting infrastructure development. The challenges associ ...

The Mackinac Technology Company is proposing to develop a novel antireflection film that will virtually eliminate the reflection of interior lighting on transit bus windshields and significantly improve driver visibility and passenger/pedestrian safety. Additives are incorporated into windshield glass to reduce solar glare during daylight hours. These additives have the unfortunate effect of in ...

While thorough assessment of concrete chemistry is vital to evaluating the health of (transportation) infrastructure systems, the costly and time-consuming nature of available chemical analysis methods limit their applications. A nondestructive test method will be developed for thorough evaluation of concrete chemistry and deterioration conditions at different depths. An analytical chemistry metho ...

Oscilla Power, Inc. (OPI) is developing a utility-scale wave energy harvester that is enabled by low cost and readily-available magnetostrictive alloys. T his device, which utilizes no moving parts, has the potential to deliver predictable quantities of electric power to coastal utilities, industrial users, and remote facilities at costs competitive with coal or gas. The Phase I project demonstra ...

The gray whale migration generates many hours of video that must be examined carefully to identify passing whales and get an accurate count of their numbers. Unfortunately, humans lack the necessary attention span. To solve this problem, a detector will be developed that can process hours of video, detecting whale blows while minimizing false positives and negatives. With an accurate record of ...

Various methods for increasing seat belt usage have been investigated over the last several years including visual and audible warnings currently installed in today’s vehicles. In spite of these attempts, FMCSA research has shown that drivers of about 59% of commercial motor vehicles (those weighing 10,000 pounds or more that operate in interstate commerce) buckle their safety belts as compared ...

Wavetronix currently sells the SmartSensor HD radar detection which is the highest performance above ground detector currently available. However, the count, speed and classification accuracy can be significantlly improved by employing multi-beam radar technology which we have recently developed. Multi-beam radar technology allows multiple radars to be used cost effectively inside a single senso ...

Various methods for increasing seat belt usage have been investigated over the last several years including visual and audible warnings currently installed in today's vehicles. In spite of these attempts, FMCSA research has shown that drivers of about 59% of commercial motor vehicles (those weighing over 10,000 pounds or more that operate in interstate commerce) buckle their safety belts as compa ...

To improve safety and efficiency on high-speed signalized intersections a dilemma zone protection system has been designed to automatically configure site-specific protection boundaries on both main-street approaches by continously tracking vehicles within up to 1000 feet of each stop line. The system will further customize and refine protection by continously estimating the probability of a seve ...