Award Data

Enabling operators to command and control multiple UAVs will require higher levels of supervisory control, enabling vehicles to operate autonomously during larger portions of each mission. For the foreseeable future, however, critical portions of each mission will require operators to apply their superior knowledge, judgment, and skills to assess the situation, monitor execution more closely and, ...

An experimental method is proposed to enable time-resolved measurements of both gas and particle velocities in explosions containing particles for munitions research. The approach involves novel processing methods for two-dimensional images that allow discrimination of the image content based on particle size. This allows an image containing a poly-dispersed distribution of particles to be decompo ...

We propose to investigate, in collaboration with the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center and Altec, Inc., the application of surface electromyography (sEMG) to assessing cognitive workload, strain, and overload. Specifically, sEMG sensors placed on the face and neck will detect emotional/motor responses to workload strain. The proposed effort will build on the substantial sEMG experience o ...

Current scene projection hardware is challenged to simultaneously meet the requirements for high peak temperature (> 2000K), high resolution (> 1Kx1K), response time < 1 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 ...

The aerothermal environment for hypersonic flight vehicles is severe and can generate extremely high material temperatures. These high-temperature environments can cause intense localized heating, which may result in local pockets and/or structural instabilities, especially at vehicle leading-edge regions, and may lead to disruptions that affect vehicle performance. The aerothermal environment may ...

A critical aspect of exoskeleton control that has to date introduced a performance limitation is the ability of the exoskeleton to recognize the intent of the operator so it can apply assistance to their desired motion. This intent recognition effort is typically solved using ad-hoc methods where subject matter experts make design decisions and tune transitions to identify intended maneuvers as re ...

Many environmental factors can potentially affect a communitys security. In this project, we propose to develop an open source system, called RiskWatch, for harvesting data from multiple sources and linking that data to security outcomes. Relevant data can potentially be found in a wide variety of sources, including structured, numeric data sets and images published by governments and NGOs, in na ...

There is a lack of quantitative tools to accurately map tissue viability in a rapid and quantitative manner so a surgeon can properly excise tissue prior to grafting. Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging (SFDI) is an optical method that has been shown to be a reliable method for physiology assessment - particularly for burn depth. SFDI measures of tissue structure (scattering) and function (hemoglobi ...

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 ...

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is vulnerable to radio-frequency (RF) sources of interference and must be defended through electronic protection (EP) measures such as anti-jam (AJ) and anti-spoof (AS). The Phase I effort investigated antenna, electronic, and algorithmic designs for systems capable of supporting direction-finding (DF) measurements while simultaneously performing anti-jam and an ...