Award Data

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to develop a high speed laser machining process for ceramic matrix composites. The recent development of high rate, high pulse power lasers and the non-contact nature of the PSI process minimize the damage typical of other laser machining processes. It also enables precise placement of through holes, trenches and identification markings. The goal of the Phase ...

Effective task management is a critical component of mission success. As warfighters are given more information to monitor, however, their ability to detect and attend to critical information and tasks is stressed. An automatic task manager is needed to help ensure that responses to events occur in a timely manner. The foundation of such a tool is an accurate model of human dynamic attention. Many ...

Ammonium perchlorate (AP) is the most commonly used oxidizing ingredient in solid propellant formulations. It carries a sufficient excess of oxygen to allow for the combustion of the required binder and added metal, such as aluminum. One major drawback of AP is its chlorine content which results in the formation of hydrochloric acid (HCl) as a combustion product and can cause environmental probl ...

Techno-Sciences, Inc. (TSi), in collaboration with the Smart Structures Laboratory of the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center at the University of Maryland (UMD), proposes to develop an innovative mechanized skin technology for large-scale area changes in morphing UAVs. The pneumatically driven morphing skin (PDMS) system will exploit superior performance characteristics of McKibben actuators, in con ...

For many military operational scenarios there is an extremely large geographical theater. Providing coverage requires 100s to 1000s of sensing devices. Command and control (C2) of such a large number of devices, to provide time sensitive targeting (TST), poses a difficult technical challenge. Our solution to this problem is to use a hierarchy of unattended ground sensors (UGS). Ultra low-cost trig ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and Purdue University (PU) propose to synthesize, characterize, and investigate the efficiency, reactivity, and selectivity of new nanocatalysts in hydrocarbon fuel liquid for RBCC applications. The nanocatalysts will have higher surface area/volume compared to conventional microcatalysts and films, thereby leading to faster reaction rates. Decreased coking will occur ...

Networks of UAV’s equipped with video sensors promise an affordable capability to keep track of moving ground targets of military interest in an urban environment in the presence of target occlusion, clutter, and other background traffic. But maintaining continuous track on multiple targets that move in and out of the field of view of any single UAV’s sensor poses a significant problem of cont ...

We propose to develop advanced algorithms and software to collaboratively track people and vehicles in an urban environment using video imagery (visible, IR) from a network of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The tracking and data fusion architecture will have one fusion node in a surveillance region, with a number of UAVs associated with the fusion node. We propose the multiple hypotheses trackin ...

The coupling of GPS and INS is often characterized as loose, tight, or ultra-tight depending on the nature of the GPS input to the navigation filter. Thus, considering the challenge of precision navigation without GPS, this project will test and validate the coupling of sensor (EO, IR) information such as ego-motion and position updates similar to the coupling of a GPS and INS system. This proje ...

With the rapid release of new software applications, builds and patches for existing applications, and increased mobility of software across networks, more of our systems will run software applications that may not have a full pedigree of evaluation and testing to ensure that they are free from exploits and malware. Additionally, any previous certifications are invalidated at the first update. H ...