Award Data

A unique type of air lubricated thrust bearing called a Wave Bearing is proposed to assist a rolling element bearing to carry the thrust load and to improve the bearing’s life when used in a micro gas turbine engine. The Wave Bearing technology will provide improved reliability, safety and life compared to rolling element bearings used alone, as well as to allow simplification of engine design a ...

We envision a coherently coupled QCL array architecture featuring 2nd order DFB gratings to vertically couple out light with excellent beam quality and high output power. This approach does not require cleaving of the devices or facet coatings and is therefore inherently more robust and manufacturable than facet emitters.

Nanotrons Corporation, in collaboration with Professor Byungki Kim at NSF Nanomanufacturing Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML), proposes to develop the low-cost high-rate manufacturing technique for flexible explosive detection sensors to significantly increase sensitivity of detection of trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosives. The new approach combines cutting-edge nanomate ...

Having realized the bottlenecks in electronic systems-on-film manufacturing, Omega Optics and the University of Texas at Austin propose to develop a low-cost, high rate, roll-to-roll manufacturing process for hybrid electronic systems on flexible substrates. Roll-to-roll fabrication of hybrid systems enables the utilization of the combined advantages of organic, inorganic and other material system ...

Optically pumped magnetometers provide very high performance but they cost tens of thousands of dollars, and they are large and power hungry. Recently we successfully developed and commercialized laser pumped magnetometers with size, weight and power consumption that is an order of magnitude below current state-of-the-art without sacrificing performance. In this project, the focus will be on produ ...

UUV"s have become increasingly important tools in the collection of environmental data. Their unique ability to operate independent of surface vessel conditions allows artic measures when traditional means is not possible. It is now well agreed that artic regions are critical to man"s understanding of the environment. Historically sensor packages for UUV"s have been based on"adaptions"of ship depl ...

The dependability, persistence, and versatility of unmanned systems have made them indispensable assets in today’s warfighting. As they are tasked to fulfill new missions in unpredictable, dynamic environments, they are transitioning from remote control into the realm of autonomy. Here they perform rapid and semi-autonomous behaviors, such as re-planning and re-tasking, to accomplish mission obj ...

For Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to operate seamlessly in both the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) and abroad, it will be crucial that they possess a sense-and-avoid (SAA) capability that can ensure safe operations among maneuvering, non-cooperative aircraft. Numerica Corporation, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University, proposes to develop a set of algorithms to model the uncertaintie ...

RDRTec Inc. and Lincoln Laboratory propose to establish the feasibility and develop the plan for an extensible analytic framework and methodology to address unanticipated maneuver encounter modeling, collision risk estimation, and ownship maneuver logic. With the widespread introduction of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), the nature of the airspace will change significantly over the next 10-20 yea ...

The suppression of a ship’s magnetic signature is important in the effort to thwart detection by adversarial forces and prevent engagement with magnetic fused weapons. There are two ways to model ship magnetic signatures; through the use of finite element based analytical models and through the use of physical scale models (PSM). Finite element based analytical models are less expensive and have ...