Department of the navy (don) 17. 1 Small Business Innovation Research (sbir) Proposal Submission Instructions introduction

REFERENCES:

1. Turpin, Darrell and Welles, Reginald, Applied Simulation Technologies, “Analysis of Simulator-based Training Effectiveness through Driver Performance Measurement.”

2. California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training Driver Training Study. http://lib.post.ca.gov/Publications/driver_training.pdf

3. Lonero, Lawrence Northport Associates, and Mayhew, Dan /Traffic Injury Research Foundation for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. “Large-Scale Evaluation of Driver Education view of the Literature on Driver Education Evaluation 2010 Update. “

4. Hoff, Paul. “Preliminary Results – Simulator Based Training to Reduce Costs” May 2002. -

KEYWORDS: Driver performance monitoring; Tactical vehicle operator training; vehicle skill trainers; Automated recording and analysis of driver performance; Android applications to record vehicle data; Ground vehicle simulators

Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website.

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Information Systems

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PM Combat Support Systems (CSS), PdM Test, Measurement, and Diagnostic Equipment, Electronic Maintenance Support System (EMSS)

OBJECTIVE: Develop “Electronic Paper Technology” to provide a laptop accessory, specifically a portable, flexible, external electronic Display Screen that can be used by individual Marine Maintainers to view schematic diagrams, drawings, and pictures at the point of maintenance. Ideally, this device provides the same level of integration as any commercial off the shelf (COTS) computer display screen; requiring minimal software drivers, and hardware connections limited to power and commonly used Personal Computer and or Audio Video interface standards (DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI, Display Port, S-video, USB, etc). This Display will be connected to the Electronic Maintenance Support System (EMSS) to provide a large clear full view of detailed schematics, drawings and pictures contained in Technical publications.

DESCRIPTION: A Collapsible Electronic Display Screen is an ideal accessory for the EMSS. A technology that may enable this is “Electronic Paper” (aka E Paper, Smart Paper, paper tablet, etc.). This is a technology that provides a lightweight, thin flexible, view-screen, capable of severe bending in normal powered operation. There are black and white as well as color technologies available, some of which will still display content while powered down. Another technology with promise is Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) which can support full color motion video in flexible displays. In some form these technologies are already in limited use, i.e. the Samsung Galaxy S-6 Edge cell phone. There are several different technology approaches to support a Collapsible Electronic Display, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Currently, there is no viable implementation of this technology that supports this need generated by the Marine Corps maintenance concept of operation. There is no portable display that can be stored in a compact, rugged configuration and then capable of expanding to a large screen size during use.

This development initiative is to enhance the usefulness of the EMSS for the Marine Corps Maintainer. They troubleshoot and repair Marine Corps equipment, in a variety of facilities and environmental conditions, worldwide. Like EMSS, it needs to be one man transportable (i.e., backpack), and capable of portable operation. EMSS is a portable field level Maintenance Aid and the primary Device (currently a Panasonic CF-19 Toughbook) used by Marine Maintainers that provides access to electronic Technical Manuals and other Maintenance/ Technical data. EMSS also provides At-System Test and Diagnostic capability in a compact battery powered device. When developing this product the Company will be expected to evaluate the various available Technologies, and their capabilities, then develop the most innovative approach that can most effectively meet the Marine Corps goals and requirements. Durability is most likely the biggest challenge of this technology as the Marine Corps need will require the following:

a. Collapsible Electronic Display will collapse (roll or fold) when not in use. Intent being to reduce its size as is practical and possible. Ideally an E Paper display would be foldable or rolled up to a compact size and could be stored in the same backpack with the EMSS Computer device and accessories.
b. Collapsible Electronic Display will at a minimum provide an 11” X 17” size display in active use. With the intent being to display complete ANSI B, C, and D size drawings to a large readable scale. It can be un-rolled, un-folded, or snapped together to form a large display.
c. Collapsible Electronic Display should connect to a laptop via USB or VGA and may support other designated Video connections; e.g., HDMI.
d. If the Collapsible Electronic Display is not capable of being powered by the laptop via a USB connection it will have a rechargeable, replaceable, internal power source with a power input port for external AC power/charging.
e. Collapsible Electronic Display will work as an external display screen to a EMSS laptop and will provide software drivers to provide the ability to display both the drawing/schematic on the Collapsible Electronic Display Screen and the EMSS laptop at the same time.
f. Collapsible Electronic Display must be capable of operating in bright and low light situations.
g. Collapsible Electronic Display must meet applicable ruggedized standards, i.e. MIL-STD-810 in its collapsed state in order to maintain survivability in the operational environment.
h. Collapsible Electronic Display may meet a reduced ruggedized standard while in operation, but MIL-STD-810 is still the goal. It must survive operation in typical outdoor maintenance environments where dust, humidity, heat and cold can vary. Preferred operational temperature ranges are 0 to 50 degrees Celsius.
i. Collapsible Electronic Display must be functional and practical to use by a single maintainer, who may be using both hands for other tasks, i.e. device may come with independent ability to stand up (a kickstand) or physically attach to the laptop; any solution must allow both screens to be fully visible at the same time in the same plane of vision.
j. Optionally, advanced capabilities include software that when connected, the E Paper display should operate like an extended display but must have the ability to capture images from a technical manual on the primary display and be able to project the image to the E Paper Display. Conceptually, the Maintainer has the ability to manipulate (zoom, move, rotate) the image. In addition, a capability to add notes, highlights, or comments that can be saved in an overlay of the image and retrieved later would be desired. Touch screen technology would further enhance this capability.

PHASE I: The Company will develop a concept for an improved “Electronic Paper” Collapsible Electronic Display that meets the requirements described above. The company will demonstrate the feasibility of the concept in meeting Marine Corps needs and will establish that the concepts can be developed into a useful product for the Marine Corps. Feasibility will be established by material testing and analytical modeling, as appropriate. The small business will provide a Phase II development plan with performance goals and key technical milestones, and that will address technical risk reduction.

PHASE II: Based on the results of Phase I and the Phase II development plan, the small business will develop two to three Collapsible Electronic Paper Display prototypes for evaluation. These prototypes will be evaluated to determine capability in meeting the performance goals defined in the Phase II development plan and the Marine Corps requirements for the “Electronic Paper” Collapsible Electronic Display. Prototype performance will be demonstrated through bench top and field environment evaluations over the required range of parameters. Evaluation results will be used to refine the prototype into an initial design that will meet Marine Corps requirements. The company will prepare a Phase III development plan to transition the technology to Marine Corps use.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: If Phase II is successful, the company will be expected to support the Marine Corps in transitioning the Collapsible Electronic Display technology for Marine Corps use; providing ten to twelve devices for evaluation. Using the evaluation results from Phase II the company will develop a refined device for evaluation to determine its effectiveness in operationally relevant environments. The company will support compliance with DOD statutory and regulatory requirements for IT procurement and the Marine Corps requirements for test and validation to certify and qualify the system for Marine Corps use. Private Sector Commercial Potential: The potential for commercial application and dual use is high. The Proposed concept would be easily adapted into various sizes to support classroom training, business presentations, Advertising displays, and more. Architects and Construction Engineers could quickly view construction drawings and blue prints anywhere in the field. The lightweight and compact nature of the “Electronic Paper” Collapsible Electronic Display would eliminate the need for dragging around large bulky video monitors. These displays could potentially connect to Cell Phones and display to the larger screen when connected. This effort could help advance mobile/portable technology capabilities.

REFERENCES:

1. Williams, Martyn. “LG Display Develops Flexible E-newspaper Screen” PCWorld. IDG News Service. Accessed 25 Feb. 2016 http://www.pcworld.com/article/186875/lg_display_develops_flexible_epaper_screen.html

2. Anthony, Sebastian. “LG’s flexible and transparent OLED displays are the beginning of the e-paper revolution” EXTREME TECH July 14, 2014 at 1:07 pm, Accessed 25 Feb. 2016 http://www.extremetech.com/computing/186241-lgs-flexible-and-transparent-oled-displays-are-the-beginning-of-the-e-paper-revolution

3. Eink “Ink Technology Electrophoretic Ink, explained.” – Eink Company Website. Date Accessed 25 Feb 2016 http://www.eink.com/technology.html

4. Wikipedia, “Electronic Paper” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Website modified 9 Feb 2016, Accessed 25 Feb 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

5. Department of Defense. MIL-STD-810G, Environmental Engineering Considerations and Laboratory Tests. 31 Oct 2008. http://www.atec.army.mil/publications/Mil-Std-810G/Mil-std-810G.pdf-

KEYWORDS: Electronic Paper; Flexible Display; Smart Paper; EMSS; Eink; OLED

Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website.

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Information Systems, Sensors

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA 264 AIR ANTI-SUBMARINE (ASW) SYSTEMS

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the Announcement. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws.

OBJECTIVE: Develop and adapt deep learning algorithms to multi-static active sonar (specifically Multi-static Active Coherent (MAC)) to improve automated signal and information processing as well as target detection and discrimination capabilities.

DESCRIPTION: To counter ever quieter submerged threats, the Navy employs active sonar for the detection of such threats. For air-deployed wide-area search sonar systems, multiple sources and receivers can be distributed across an area. Currently with such a distributed field of sources and receivers, only one source transmits at a time while multiple receivers listen (Single Input Multiple Output (SIMO)). After one source has transmitted its ping, a new source is commanded to ping with potentially a different set of receivers tuned for processing.

In order to reduce time on station (and hence platform operational costs) the Navy desires to accelerate the detection process. One method to achieve this is to have multiple sources transmit simultaneously with multiple receivers processing the received signals. This is referred to as a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system. Along with the increased data rate, there is the potential for increased clutter (signals not from the target of interest). It is very important for an Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) operator to be able to correctly identify echoes from man-made submerged objects.

The performance of current multi-static active coherent sonar systems such as the air-deployed Multi-static Active Coherent (MAC) system would benefit from automated algorithms that reduce clutter. The Navy is seeking to reduce the clutter from each ping (on average) by at least 25%. Improving the clutter rejection capability of existing signal processing chains will allow operators to focus more on higher probability contacts, boost the performance of downstream signal processing algorithms and decrease the complexity of MIMO systems that broadcast pings from multiple sources simultaneously. While traditional sonar signal processing chains rely heavily on matched filtering and the extraction of engineered features, deep learning systems have demonstrated capabilities to learn discriminative feature representations from data. Systems based on deep neural network architectures have produced results in several related domains, including image classification [Ref 1] and speech recognition [Ref 2]. These results represent significant improvement over the previous state of the art in those fields.

The Navy seeks to develop and adapt deep learning algorithms to multi-static active sonar (specifically MAC) to improve automated signal and information processing as well as target detection and discrimination capabilities. In traditional systems, the signal processing chain consists of beamforming, matched filtering and square law detection. It is followed by an information processing chain that typically includes steps for clustering detections, feature extraction and classification. Deep learning techniques facilitate data driven solutions and may be used to learn intermediate representation of the data that effectively combine several traditional processing stages and are suitable for interfacing directly with downstream tracking algorithms. In addition, semi-supervised or unsupervised deep learning techniques may provide a mechanism for leveraging existing sonobuoy data to learn representations for clutter that transfer from one mission environment to another. Finally, the performance of any deep learning algorithm must be robust in that it must be able to work well in all environments (shallow or deep water) especially in locations where data has not previously been collected or trained on.

Platform specific information, such as computational and power constraints, will be provided by the Navy during Phase I.

Work produced in Phase II may become classified. Note: The prospective contractor(s) must be U.S. owned and operated with no foreign influence as defined by DoD 5220.22-M, National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, unless acceptable mitigating procedures can and have been implemented and approved by the Defense Security Service (DSS). The selected contractor and/or subcontractor must be able to acquire and maintain a secret level facility and Personnel Security Clearances, in order to perform on advanced phases of this project as set forth by DSS and NAVAIR in order to gain access to classified information pertaining to the national defense of the United States and its allies; this will be an inherent requirement. The selected company will be required to safeguard classified material IAW DoD 5220.22-M during the advanced phases of this contract.

PHASE I: Develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a deep learning algorithm and illustrate the advantage over more conventional approaches via benchmarks on provided unclassified datasets. [These data sets are recordings from MAC missions (AN/SSQ-101A and AN/SSQ-125 sonobuoys) that include SIMO and MIMO operation and have either no known targets present or simulated target signals.]

PHASE II: Develop and implement a real-time prototype of the algorithm for Air Deployable Active Receiver (ADAR, AN/SSQ-101A) sonobuoy data provided during Phase I. Demonstrate that the algorithm can be executed within the computational and power constraints of the targeted P8-A (Poseidon) system application architecture. Demonstrate that at least a 25% reduction in clutter (on average) can be achieved on SIMO and MIMO provided classified data sets with either no known targets present or an actual target in the field.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Support the Navy in transitioning the algorithm prototype for Navy use during MAC data gathering events. Support integration of this capability into a P-8A Application Baseline Architecture (ABA) construct. This may require further refinements to the algorithm and its real-time hardware implementation. Support testing to certify proper implementation and integration into the platform’s ASW mission system. Private Sector Commercial Potential: Developed technologies may be used for commercial applications such as tumor detection and discrimination, image recognition, and oil exploration.

REFERENCES:

1. Krizhevsky, Alex, Sutskever, Ilya, and Hinton, Geoffrey E. "Imagenet classification with deep convolutional neural networks." Advances in neural information processing systems 25. 2012.

2. Dahl, George, Mohamed, Abdel-Rahman, and Hinton, Geoffrey E "Phone recognition with the mean-covariance restricted Boltzmann machine." Advances in neural information processing systems 23. 2010.

KEYWORDS: Deep learning; Multi-static; ASW; Clutter reduction; Target discrimination; Signal processing

Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website.

N171-006

TITLE: Guided Rocket Inductive Link

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Air Platform, Electronics, Weapons

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-242, Direct and Time Sensitive Strike

OBJECTIVE: Provide rockets with a method for programming fuze settings, providing targeting data, and a compliant arming environment for fuzing.

DESCRIPTION: As weapon systems become more complex and their capabilities expand, there is a growing need to transfer additional data to these systems. For example, sending advanced guidance and fuzing upgrades to rockets so that they may become “fire and forget” systems cannot currently be implemented because of an inability to provide the weapon targeting data or fuze settings while it is in the launcher. This is due to a lack of power and communication interface. There is a strong desire that the data and power transfer occur wirelessly without the need of umbilicals or other connections from a launcher to a proposed weapon [Ref 1]. A solution capable of accepting signals from a MIL-STD-1760 interface, or potentially a wireless connection, that provides the targeting information and fuze settings from the cockpit, is sought. The device should be capable of using an inductive interface to provide ultra-short range wireless power and communications to the selected weapon. The interface could consist of inductive power transmission, an inductive serial interface, and a method for the weapon to verify it is in the correct location and still connected via a Near Field Communication (NFC) type device. The circuit in the weapon would need to use the provided power to validate it is in the launcher through the NFC device, store the power on a capacitor for a duration of time sufficient to store the provided settings and data in RAM so that it is available after launch once the thermal battery is available. The proposed system would need to be small and compact to fit within the LAU-61G/A Digital Rocket Launcher and must be robust enough to survive the vibration, temperature and humidity environments aboard the aircraft (per MIL-STD-810G) while continuing to operate after repeated weapon launches (adjacent rocket firings), potentially resulting in increased temperatures and buildup of carbon, dirt, and oil residue that may be electrically conductive. This residue may have the potential to limit or inhibit the transmission of the inductive signal.

PHASE I: Design and demonstrate feasibility for the development of a Guided Rocket Inductive Link system. Demonstrate feasibility of operation with representative obscuration from residue.

PHASE II: Based on Phase I effort, improve robustness of the design to survive the expected flight vibration, temperature extremes, and humidity environments on the required aircraft. Design and build Guided Rocket Inductive Link prototype unit that would integrate into the LAU-61G/A digital rocket launcher and perform end-to-end demonstration of the system working from the cockpit setting to rocket launch and successful capture of the transmitted data. Perform initial E3 testing via MIL-STD-461/464 to include HERO and electrostatic discharge (ESD). Assess or demonstrate functionality within a range of temperatures from -45 deg C to +71 deg C.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Integrate the Guided Rocket Inductive Link prototype unit into government furnished launcher. Demonstrate capability to pass information from simulated aircraft interface to launcher to a potential system. Perform additional operational testing per MIL-STD-810G, to assess effects of vibration, temperature, and humidity environments, and MIL-S-901 for ship shock. Private Sector Commercial Potential: Technology developed under this effort will mature the ability to transfer power, data, and other secure information inductively. This has potential interest by the car industry, banking industry, and other tech industries.

REFERENCES:

1. Weapon and weapon station system and method for loading, testing, targeting, and/or launching a weapon. US Patent 8,495,945; Jul. 30, 2013. http://www.google.com/patents/US8495945

2. MIL-STD-810G, Department of Defense Test Method Standard: Environmental Engineering Considerations and Laboratory Tests. CHG-1, dated 4/2014. http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-0800-0899/MIL-STD-810G_12306/

3. MIL-STD-1760E, Department of Defense Interface Standard: Aircraft/Store Electrical Interconnection System. Dated 1 August 2003. http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-1700-1799/download.php?spec=MIL-STD-1760E.010197.PDF

4. MIL-STD-461G, Department of Defense Interface Standard: Requirements for the Control of Electromagnetic Interference Characteristics of Subsystems and Equipment. 11 December 2015. http://everyspec.com/

5. MIL-STD-464, Department of Defense Interface Standard: Electromagnetic Environmental Effects, Requirements for Systems. 021 December 2010. http://everyspec.com/

6. Adeeb, M. A., et. al. (2012). An Inductive Link-Based Wireless Power Transfer System for Biomedical Applications. Active and Passive Electronic Components. http://www.hindawi.com/journals/apec/2012/879294/-