SSCI Wins $750,000 Air Force SBIR Grant to Develop Software Technology for 3-D Surveillance Imagery

Program Leverages SSCI Leadership in Developing Intelligent Autonomous Unmanned Systems Technology

WOBURN, MA, Aug. 3, 2009 – Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI), a leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, today announced it has been awarded a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Air Force to develop high-quality three-dimensional (3-D) imaging technologies for use in automated surveillance systems. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant leverages SSCI’s leadership in technology enabling intelligent autonomous land-based and aerial unmanned systems to perform their missions in hostile or challenging environments.

The SBIR program is seeking new technologies enabling future surveillance systems to capture very high-quality 3-D images of vehicles, buildings, terrain and other subjects using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology. SSCI will develop SAR 3-D imaging technology capable of providing uniform wide-area intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance gathering capabilities in all weather, both day and night. The technology will enable autonomous unmanned vehicles to navigate and identify targets on the ground. It will also enable highly accurate SAR 3-D aerial reconnaissance by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

“Our technology platform provides the brains and nervous systems for unmanned vehicles to operate autonomously and accomplish their missions flawlessly,” said Dr. Raman Mehra, Founder & CEO of SSCI. “Being selected for this critical U.S. Air Force development program underscores the importance of the technologies SSCI is developing.”

SSCI is one of the nation’s top recipients of SBIR grants. The goal of the Air Force award, for Phase II of the Three-Dimensional (3D) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Image Formation and Exploitation program, is to ”demonstrate the utility of the algorithms on measured radar data in the application of high confidence vehicle identification, building and terrain modeling, or change detection.”  SBIR grants are designed to stimulates technological innovation and promote the productivity and economic growth of the nation by engaging private enterprise in productive innovation projects for the U.S. government.

SSCI (www.ssci.com) will present a technical paper and meet customers at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2009 conference in Washington D.C. from Aug. 10-13 (Booth #129).

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.

Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

SSCI and MIT team up to develop and test sense and avoid capability for NAVAIR

WOBURN, MA, July 16, 2009 – The Naval Air Warfare Center today awarded Scientific Systems a Phase I SBIR contract to develop and test a system that could help manned and unmanned systems more safely fly in the same airspace.  Expanding SSCI’s partnership with key providers of defense technology, additional technical expertise for this effort will be provided through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In this effort, the SSCI-led team will develop and test the on-board Fast Online pREdiCtion of Aircraft State Trajectories (FORECAST) system, using minimum state information such as 3-D position of a threat aircraft, to generate predicted trajectories and reachable sets T seconds into the future. It will be based on a nonlinear constrained stochastic model of aircraft dynamics involving rapid maneuvering, advanced nonlinear filtering techniques, and the design of the predicted exclusion zone for the aircraft operating in the vicinity of the threat aircraft. The algorithms used to develop the FORECAST technology will include: multi-model nonlinear filtering using Interacting Multiple Models; Extended Kalman Filter; Fokker Planck Equation; and exclusion zone calculation using stochastic feedback version of the Rapidly-exploring Random Trees algorithm. In Phase I, we will test the FORECAST system on a simplified scenario simulation. The Option will include extensive testing on a higher-fidelity simulation. In Phase II, we will continue algorithm development, perform extensive simulations and flight testing at MIT”s RAVEN facility, and develop the FORECAST software toolbox. Our academic partner, Prof. Jonathan How of MIT, brings in a wealth of expertise and experience in the area of 4-D trajectory planning, autonomous UAV control, multi-agent collaboration, and advanced flight test facilities.

Improved capability in mid-air collisions predictions leading to fewer nuisance warning, increased user acceptance, and integration of unmanned aerial systems into the National Airspace is a key technology component for the safety of the air vehicles and its applications. Homeland Defense and law enforcement will also benefit from these technologies. Commercial applications of trajectory prediction techniques and systems exist in areas such as air traffic control and space situational awareness.

Being funded to do this work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy for unmanned systems by developing one aspect of the “brains and nervous system” necessary for intelligent autonomy.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

SSCI Wins Navy Grant to Develop Super-Resolution Optics for Tactical Sensors

Program Leverages SSCI Leadership in Developing Intelligent Autonomous Unmanned Systems Technology

WOBURN, MA, June 5, 2009 – Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI), a leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, today announced it has been awarded a grant from the U.S. Navy to develop super-resolution optics for tactical sensors. The Small Business Investment Research (SBIR) grant leverages SSCI’s leadership in technology enabling intelligent autonomous unmanned systems to perform their missions in hostile or challenging environments.

The SBIR program is seeking new technologies to create and capture image data beyond the range of current optical imaging systems used in battlefield situations and with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The technology must capture high-resolution images even in severe atmospheric conditions that can distort imagery such as drastic heat, turbulence or other events that distort visibility. SSCI will develop technology for super-resolving terrestrial scenes, focusing on flexible image reconstruction algorithms exploiting fast, lightweight graphics processing units. The new technology will enhance the performance and ability of intelligent unmanned systems to operate more independently than in the past.

“Being selected for this critical U.S. Navy development program underscores the importance of the technologies SSCI is developing,” said Dr. Raman Mehra, Founder & CEO. “SSCI’s technology platform provides the brains and nervous systems of unmanned vehicles that need to operate collaboratively and seamlessly with manned assets to accomplish missions in challenging environments.”

SSCI is one of the nation’s top recipients of SBIR grants. The funding, for Phase I of the Super-Resolution Optics for Tactical Sensors program, is for an “end-to-end optical imaging system prototype that will produce images at a 1Hz rate, with image resolutions at or beyond the diffraction limit, under severe atmospheric conditions.” SBIR grants are designed to stimulates technological innovation and promote the productivity and economic growth of the nation by engaging private enterprise in productive innovation projects for the U.S. government.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

SSCI-led team of Lockheed Martin, iRobot and Kairos Autonomi to develop datafusion algorithms for the Office of Naval Research (ONR)

WOBURN, MA, May 18, 2009 – The Office of Naval Research today awarded Scientific Systems a Phase I SBIR contract today to develop algorithms that would allow soldiers to more effectively exploit data for tracking multiple targets simultaneously, which is critically important in a broad range of military applications.

Autonomous decentralized multiplatform information fusion in littoral and riverine environments using dispersed and highly disparate heterogeneous sensors on unmanned systems is a major theoretical and practical challenge. Besides highly diverse information types, systems of this kind must deal with potentially large target numbers, closely-spaced targets, potentially dense clutter, limited communication bandwidth and intermittency. The Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) team proposes a foundational approach, based on five innovations: (1) a multisensor-multitarget likelihood function that encapsulates all relevant information regarding the characteristics of the various sensors situated on various platforms; (2) unified probabilistic representation and Bayesian processing of heterogeneous information types, such as radar, EO/IR images, acoustics, and even inference rules and natural-language statements; (3) a dynamic “tactical importance function” (TIF) that mathematically specifies the meaning of target prioritization (“tactical significance”) for a given theater at any given moment, thus providing a statistical basis for automatic operator alerting; (4) integration of these concepts with track-before-detect filters; and (5)theoretically rigorous incorporation of the constraints due to the platform, terrain, and other communication-systems topologies and constraints. Under this approach, information from disparate fixed or mobile netted sensors, including UAV’s, USV’s and UUV’s, can be adaptively and optimally fused to create a common operational picture, based on a dynamically changing definition of target importance. Our project team includes Lockheed Martin, iRobot, and Kairos Autonomi. Lockheed Martin will provide both technical and commercialization support in the application of data fusion for Distributed Sensor Systems. iRobot and Kairos Autonomi will support fabrication of a prototype system in Phase II.

Data fusion and multi-target tracking is of major importance to the military, and is of critical importance to a broad range of military applications. The algorithms can be directly extended to commercial distributed traffic monitoring for intelligent highway systems, homeland security applications including facilities security, and for law enforcement applications such as border surveillance.

This research work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy in unmanned systems by improving the man-machine interface between unattended sensors collecting information and the soldiers using the information.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

Air Force funds SSCI research into Multi-layered Multi-Sensor Dynamic Detection and Discrimination of Dismounts

WOBURN, MA, February 3, 2009 – The U.S. Air Force awarded Scientific Systems a Phase I SBIR contract today to develop algorithms that would leverage information collected from heterogeneous sensors to better automate the detection and tracking of enemy foot soldiers.

With the recent changes in threats and methods of warfighting, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) activities have become critical to the military’s efforts to maintain situational awareness and neutralize the enemy’s activities. While a number sensor platforms exist for ISR and many others are currently under development, each sensor alone faces limitations in meeting the ISR criteria of world-wide perspective, fusion, detail and persistent surveillance. However, the complementary nature of these sensors facilitates a synergistic approach to Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) and Tracking in ISR scenarios.

To address this need, SSCI proposes the Discrimination using Sensor Collaboration and Verification (DiSCVer) system for dismount detection. SSCI’s approach is an architecture that calls for a high altitude, low resolution sensor generating cues that are passed along to available close-in sensing platforms for high resolution coverage of high priority targets. The proposed system will be flexible with regards to available sensors, thereby making it “future proof,” and will build on existing SSCI capabilities to develop efficient algorithms for dismount detection, density estimation, tracking and discrimination.  SSCI also intends to use its Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) to fuse features, contextual information and evidential information  obtained from different sensors.

The algorithms developed in this effort will be of great use in many Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems used by the military in the Global War on Terror and by the Department of Homeland Security. The automated algorithms proposed in this effort will help reduce the burden on personnel involved in these applications.

This research work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy in unmanned systems by automating one aspect of the ISR mission which will help create actionable information that future unmanned systems could exploit.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

Scientific Systems Names New Vice Presidents for Strategy, Research & Development and Systems Engineering

Former iRobot CTO to Head R&D for Defense and Industrial Technology Development Leader

WOBURN, MA, January 29, 2009 – Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI), a leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, today strengthened its senior management team with the promotion of three executives responsible for strategy and business development, research and development, and systems engineering. Dr. Raman Mehra, Chief Executive Officer, named three new vice presidents: Dr. Andrew Bennett, Vice President of Research & Development; Dr. Sanjeev Seereeram, Vice President of Systems Engineering; and Mr. Kunal Mehra, Vice President of Strategy and Market Development.

“The promotion of these three outstanding individuals reflects the depth and breadth of our expertise and positions Scientific Systems for growth as we continue to leverage our engineering and scientific expertise to deliver advanced solutions for the defense, industrial and commercial markets,” Dr. Mehra said. He noted that Dr. Bennet’s previous experience with the commercial robotics company iRobot and with Walt Disney Imagineering has helped the company improve its efforts to productize its advanced technologies for broader markets. [Read more]

NASA selects Scientific Systems for formation flying research

WOBURN, MA, January 22, 2009 – NASA today awarded Scientific Systems a Phase I SBIR contract to develop control algorithms that would enable groups of unmanned aircraft to fly in formation.  The initial application serves as a critical element of NASA’s search for Earthlike planets, but once developed the capability could be extended to all types of unmanned platforms.

Formation flying is a critical element in NASA’s search for Earthlike planets. Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), NASA’s first space-based mission to directly observe planets outside our own solar system, will rely on formation flying to achieve the functionality and benefits of a large instrument using multiple lower cost smaller spacecraft. Aqua mission of the Goddard Space Flight Center will use formation flying concepts (“A-Train”) to collaborate with multiple Earth observing spacecraft. The proposed techniques are directly applicable to those missions.

Among non-NASA applications are several current ongoing projects by the military. Department of Defense agencies, including DARPA, are focused on developing the next generation of collaborating and formation flying Unmanned Vehicles (UAVs, USVs, UUVs etc.) which can use the analysis methods and tools developed under this effort for performing trade-off studies for designing distributed multi-agent networks.

Being funded to do this work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy for unmanned systems by developing one aspect necessary for a single operator to be able to control many aircraft.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

NASA awards SSCI contract for Collaborative Aircraft Planning System

WOBURN, MA, January 22, 2009 – NASA today awarded Scientific Systems a Phase I SBIR contract to develop algorithms that could improve the safety and efficiency of the current National Airspace System by automating traffic and resource planning.

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) strives to transform the existing National Airspace System (NAS) into the safest, most efficient system feasible. This proposal addresses the automated surface traffic and resource planning for the NextGen Airportal concept. Current system is primarily reliant on manual planning and human decision making with minimal computer support. The proposed Collaborative Aircraft Planning System (CAPS) will implement advanced evolutionary algorithms to achieve Airportal usage optimality in real-time while maintaining the required safety margins in aircraft separation and conflict resolution. CAPS will be designed to be flexible to accommodate future aircraft capabilities and equipage, modeling of arbitrary pre-requisite and post-requisite resource requirements, weather driven changes in Airportal constraints, and will be scalable to larger metro-plexes of multiple airportals while maintaining real-time planning capabilities. CAPS will also provide intuitive graphical operator interfaces with enhanced visualization and safety alert capabilities.

SSCI will leverage its expertise and past experience in implementing evolutionary algorithms for large planning problems in designing the CAPS software tool. Phase II will lead to a CAPS software package delivery that can be integrated with NASA’s FACET and ACES software for evaluation and demonstration.

The proposed effort directly supports the NASA Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen NGATS) and provides advanced algorithms and software tools to perform integrated NextGen Airportal traffic and resource management. Phase II deliverable software package will be designed to interface with the existing tools like FACET and ACES that NASA uses for analysis and evaluation.

FAA and other government agencies will benefit from automated Airportal resource and traffic management through improved throughput of the airports with minimal delays. Performance based automated traffic planning will also enable efficient and safe operations of diverse aircraft types including unmanned vehicles alongside commercial flights. Besides aerospace, the proposed algorithms and software can easily be generalized towards transportation, manufacturing, logistics and military resource and asset planning.

Being funded to do this work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy for unmanned systems by developing one aspect of the “brains and nervous system” necessary for intelligent autonomy.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

U.S. Air Force awards SSCI contract to design adaptive flight control systems

WOBURN, MA, January 22, 2009 – NASA today awarded Scientific Systems a Phase I SBIR contract to conduct research on adaptive flight control systems.  Expanding SSCI’s partnership with key providers of defense technology, additional technical expertise for this effort will be provided through Boeing Phantom Works and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Design of effective adaptive flight control systems capable of accommodating highly nonlinear vehicle dynamics and large uncertainties is fundamental to the future advancement of aircraft development and design. For most aerospace applications nonlinear dynamics and uncertainty can either be inherent to the airframe design or induced from flight sustained upsets, damage and/or external hazards. Hence the proposed technique will find wide applications in flight control design for both commercial and military aerospace vehicles. In addition, effective adaptive control designs are directly applicable to guidance, navigation and control (GNC) problems in space exploration.

Efficient adaptive control system designs are applicable to a wide variety of engineering systems including general Unmanned Systems (aerial, ground, surface, underwater), robotics, automotive industry, process control, and power systems.

Being funded to do this work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy for unmanned systems by developing one aspect of the “brains and nervous system” necessary for intelligent autonomy.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

SSCI awarded contract for Geolocation of RF Emitters

WOBURN, MA, January 7, 2009 – Under Air Force SBIR topic F083-135, Scientific Systems has been awarded a Phase I contract to develop a radio frequency (RF) transmitter geolocation capability.  Expanding SSCI’s partnership with key providers of defense technology, Raytheon Missile Systems will subcontract to Scientific Systems as part of this effort.

The program will produce a system for geolocating, associating, and tracking emitters associated with RF guided threats. The system opportunistically uses sensor measurements, enabling both improved geolocation, and applicability to a wide array of missions and sensor configurations. The system is designed to make use of existing and planned RWR hardware and, as such, incremental costs are kept low and there is a believable route to transition validated technology into practice.

Being funded to do this work moves Scientific Systems closer to its goal of enabling intelligent autonomy in unmanned systems by passively sensing available information which will help create actionable information that future unmanned systems could exploit.

About Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI) pioneers products and technologies that provide the intelligence for unmanned ground, air and maritime vehicles to autonomously and collaboratively accomplish missions in difficult environments. A leading developer of technology solutions for defense and industrial suppliers, SSCI is one of the top 20 recipients of Small Business Innovation Research awards in the U.S. and is recognized by the U.S. Navy and Army for its record of successful technology transitions. A privately held company based in Massachusetts, SSCI collaborates with a network of defense industry prime contractors and consultants, drawing on an accumulated investment of over $150 million in advanced research and development funding.

Contact:
Greg Moeller
(781) 933-5355 x295
gmoeller@ssci.com

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