Award Data

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) can be reliably used to perform on-line health monitoring of any type of structures with minimal human involvement. Current SHM systems can perform the functions required but are heavy, bulky and difficult to integrate with the structure to provide on-board real-time structural integrity assessment. Embedding of currently available sensors and electronics used by ...

A diagnostic is proposed for obtaining instantaneous three-dimensional volumetric distributions of density in a flow field at velocities ranging from subsonic to supersonic. Multiple Sheet Filtered Rayleigh Scattering (MSFRS) will be developed, which enables a series of two-dimensional images to be rapidly obtained making up a volumetric image while suppressing background scattering from wind tunn ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 Pararescuem ...

This STTR project will develop a wearable sensor suite for accurate assessment of circadian and sleep rhythms with the goal to identify abnormalities in PTSD patients and enable personalized therapy to help restore their normal functional and quality of life. Phase I has already demonstrated proof-of-principle hardware. The primary Phase II objective is to successfully carry out a human subjects s ...

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a technique used to detect near-field interaction when a sample is rater-scanned by a probe. Example include atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscope (STM). It offers nanometric and atomic image resolution. In this field, an emerging technique, Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscopy (SMM), utilizes microwave evanescent waves to attain the ...

Over the last decade the amount of data available from the internet, sensors and other sources has grown dramatically providing the opportunity to gain novel insights in many fields. Uncovering non-linear low dimensional structure in high-dimensional data (i.e., manifold learning), a key to summarization, remains a challenging problem which ultimately inhibits knowledge discovery. Intelligent Auto ...

For Robotic/Autonomous Systems (RAS) to be truly effective in the battlefield, they need to be integrated with intelligent decision-making capabilities. In particular, the following capabilities will help them dealing with the challenging real-world problems of off-road navigation: 1) Accurate terrain traversability assessment; 2) Optimal trajectory computation; and 3) Effective maneuver selection ...

Our nation’s warfighters require advanced armor to give them the best protection while allowing mobility to perform their missions. This proposal will develop two powerful tools to aid future body armor advancements. First, this research program will develop a statistical analysis software that will predict likelihood of impacts based on defined attack scenarios (i.e. rifle, distance and firing ...