Award Data

The overall objective of the Phase I and Phase II proposed effort is to design and demonstrate the ability to develop a high-speed shock tolerant composite flywheel energy storage system (FESS) using a low cost manufacturing process. The Phase I tradeoff design studies will assess the FESS size, operating speeds and material requirements needed to achieve the energy density levels and charge/disch ...

This STTR Phase I project will demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of novel biologically-inspired computational memory models for on-board exploitation of long-duration sensor data streams to enable autonomous missions in unknown environments. The key innovation in this effort is a computationally and space-efficient computational memory model that is able to: i) handle long-duration dat ...

The primary objective is to develop electric machine/drive topologies and power architectures that achieve the power densities required for 50% more power without the increase in weight or space requirements. In addition to PMSM-based designs, two new machine topologies will be considered. The first is a trapped flux coreless (TFC) machine that utilizes superconducting pucks made of YBCO to produc ...

Micro gas turbine engines with state-of-the-art ultra-compact recuperators could be a real game-changer for small unmanned air vehicles and portable power generation. A key enabling technology for these engines is a low-cost, high speed bearing system that has long life, while operating without either a separate lubrication system, or oil in the fuel. For this Phase I STTR effort, Xdot Engineerin ...

The U.S. Navy seeks methods to improve the fuel economy of marine diesel engines through utilization of waste heat. Low temperature engine jacket water, lubrication oil, and aftercooler air are largely untapped streams of thermal energy on these ships, but their utilization circumvents many operation challenges associated with exhaust gases. For example, variable and high exhaust gas temperatures ...

Stealth is a primary consideration in design and operation of ships and submarines in the Navy fleet. Noise in hydraulic systems and piping is one source of unwanted noise. A method to measure and monitor this noise is essential to controlling and eliminating these noise sources. With the assistance of UMASS Dartmouth we will present a method to externally measure the fluidborne sound pressure lev ...

The objective of the Phase I proposal is to investigate the application of controlled cavitation cleaning technology in conjunction with gecko-inspired mechanical adhesion and soft elastomeric applicators for use in non-intrusive EOD operations. This investigation requires the proof-of-concept testing and validation of a controlled cavitation cleaning mechanism, and a soft robotic gecko-inspired m ...

Metron and Northeastern University propose to design, develop, and validate a proof-of-concept predictive Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) capability using open source Reddit and GDELT data. We propose: (1) to extract and preprocess open-source Reddit and GDELT data, (2) to design a predictive graph convolutional neural network model, (3) to implement and train that model, and (4) to validate the ...

In Phase I, Metron and the University of Miami (UM) propose to develop a theoretic reduction of dynamics framework applicable to the prediction of oceanographic fields in geophysical fluid dynamic models for use onboard unmanned platforms. Our approach leverages, extends and combines modern advances in the renormalization group and Bayesian probability combined with fluid dynamics modeling and for ...

This project delivers a system to assess local uncertainties and track the evolution of the maritime environment around unmanned platforms at sea. The system uses Navy ocean forecasts for initial environmental guesses and outlooks and implements a Reduced Order Model (ROM) derived from Dynamically Orthogonal (DO) solutions to deliver a local uncertainty picture (for the next 24-48 hours). The ROM- ...