Army 8. Small Business Innovation Research (sbir) Proposal Submission Instructions

This SBIR project shall include a multidisciplinary research and development effort focusing on mechanics, materials science, physics, chemistry, design and numerical modeling and simulations, in order to identify and characterize novel combustible polymeric materials, optimize small caliber cartridge case designs, and determine production feasibility. First, this effort shall develop or identify combustible polymeric materials for small arms cartridge case applications. Included in this development is the study of the material residue after burning of the selected combustible polymeric materials. Analysis of mechanical and physical properties of the combustible materials at various temperature, humidity and treatments shall be performed. Secondly development efforts for small arms cartridge case design using combustible polymeric materials shall be carried out. Dynamic finite element analysis simulations shall be conducted to validate the internal and exterior ballistic performance of the proposed cartridge case designs. Lastly, an investigation shall be completed on the impact of the ammunition environment on the mechanical and physical properties of the selected combustible cartridge case materials. The production capability and feasibility of the proposed lightweight combustible cartridge cased small arms ammunition shall also be assessed.

The success of this novel combustible case material and design will enable a technology transition to PEO Ammunition, delivering lightweight small caliber ammunition to the U.S. Army. By reducing the ammunition weight, soldiers will be able to carry stronger armor protection and additional gear without compromising their mobility, thus achieving tactical objectives with improved soldier survivability.

The novelty of this topic is that it addresses a long term need in small caliber munitions through new and novel material technologies. While felted fiber and even celluloid based combustible cartridge cases have been implemented for large caliber propulsion systems, there has been little work done to transition to small caliber munitions, due to the issues described above. This SBIR project provides a unique opportunity to study both novel combustible case materials for small caliber ammunition but also the design of the ammunition, in order to provide the soldier with a lightweight next generation system solution.

Parameters/Metrics which these cartridges must meet:
* The cartridges should be completely consumed. No residue should be left behind after combustion.
* The cartridges should be completely hydrophobic.
* The material used to fabricate the charges should be relatively easily formed into the desired shapes.
* The cartridges must be made of a material 25% mechanically stronger than currently used in combustible cartridge cases in large caliber munitions.
* The ballistic performance of the new cartridges should be equal or better than existing ammunition.
* The weight should be 50% of that of legacy cartridges.
* There material should be non-toxic.
* The cartridges should be able to withstand standard operating conditions.
* Aging should not have significant effects on the performance or safety of the cartridge cases.

PHASE I: Develop novel small arms cartridge case design concepts using novel combustible polymeric materials. Conduct dynamic finite element analysis simulations to validate the interior ballistic performance of the proposed combustible cartridge case designs. Identify, develop and test combustible polymeric materials for small arms polymer cartridge case applications. Study the material residue after burning of the selected combustible polymeric materials. Perform analysis of mechanical and physical properties of the combustible materials at various temperature, humidity and treatments.

PHASE II: Review the results from the Phase I feasibility study. Optimize the combustible material selections and refine the cartridge case designs. Investigate environmental effects on the mechanical and physical properties of the selected combustible polymer materials. Develop proper tooling, molds and build actual prototype cases on proposed combustible small arms cartridge case designs. Conduct advanced 3-D finite element analysis modeling and simulation to validate the ballistic performance of the proposed cartridge case with combustible material at extreme low temperature or cook-off temperature in hot weapon chamber. Conduct ballistic testing to measure chamber pressure and muzzle velocity and inspect the residue material. Assess production capabilities and feasibilities of the proposed lightweight combustible cased small arms ammunitions.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: If this program is demonstrated to be successful, this combustible polymeric casing technology can be applied to military and civilian applications. Military application includes lightweight cartridge cases for small arms (5.56mm, 7.62mm and 0.50 calibers), medium caliber (20mm, 25mm, 30mm and 40mm) as well as large caliber (60mm, 81mm, 105mm and 120mm) ammunitions. The likely transition partner is the Program Executive Officer for Ammunition. Civilian applications include hunting, sport shooting, and law enforcement.

REFERENCES:

1. Chesonis, Kestusis G.; Smith, Pauline M.; Lum, William S., “Investigation of Residue and Coating Stoichiometry on 120-mm Combustible Cartridge Cases”, US Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005, ARL-TR-2337, 2000,

2. Fedoroff, B. T. and Sheffield, O. E., “Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items”, Picatinny Arsenal, Dover, NJ, Rept. No. PATR-2700, Vol. III, p. C611-C621, 1966, CPIA Abstract No. 68-0238, AD 653 029.

3. Hannum,, J. A. E., Editor, “Hazards of Chemical Rockets and Propellants”, Volume 2, Solid Propellants and Ingredients, Chemical Propulsion Information Agency, Laurel, MD, CPIA Pub. No. 394, Vol. II, Jun 1985, p. 11-3, CPIA Abstract No. 86-0027, AD A160 812

KEYWORDS: Structural, energetics, lightweight, small arms ammunition, combustible cartridge case

A18-014

TITLE: Non-GPS Local Position and Orientation Coordinate Referencing System

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Weapons

OBJECTIVE: Develop an innovative local position and orientation coordinate referencing system for establishing a referencing system for target designation, for use by fixed and mobile weapon platforms, for guidance and control of smart and guided projectiles, and for other applications in which GPS is currently being used.

DESCRIPTION: For many reasons, including the loss of the signal, the signal not being available along the full path of the flight, jamming and the like, it is highly desirable to develop an alternative local coordinate referencing system to GPS that could cover the battlefield. Such a GPS-independent local coordinate referencing system can then be used by fixed and mobile platforms as well as soldier handheld devices, for guidance and control of smart and guided projectiles, for target designation, and for other applications in which GPS is currently used. Such local coordinate referencing systems are highly desirable to use methods and devices that allow them to be networked with adjacent local coordinate referencing systems as well as being adaptive to accommodate input from multiple sources and those provided on UAVs, UGVs, forward observer, and other land and air platforms. It is also highly desirable that the local coordinate referencing system provide full orientation as well as full position information onboard a moving or fixed object. The establishment of such a full position and orientation referencing system is highly advantageous since it can enable smart munitions, weapon platforms, vehicles and warfighter to have a common accurate, reliable and secure position as well as orientation referencing system, and since static or dynamic target position and heading is also indicated in the same referencing system, the target intercept error is also minimized. The proposed local coordinate referencing system must be robust, relatively small and low power, rugged, and capable of being deployed very quickly and automatically network all the provided referencing sources. Each proposed system must be capable of providing a local coordinate referencing system over a 30 km and preferably 50 km range with the capability of being networked with adjacent systems to extend the range. The system must be capable of providing full position (which includes elevation) accuracy of better than 2 m and sub-degree full orientation accuracy. The proposals must address issues related to reducing the probability of detection and jamming of the system referencing sources.

PHASE I: Design an innovative non-GPS local position and orientation coordinate referencing system for establishing a referencing system for target designation, for use by fixed and mobile weapon platforms, for guidance and control of smart and guided projectiles, and for other applications requiring position and/or orientation referencing. Using realistic modeling and simulation, determine the potential performance of the system, including its position and orientation measurement accuracy, range, power requirement, and line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight performance.

PHASE II: Develop the local position and orientation coordinate referencing system with the system requirements to be formulated based on the results of the Phase I feasibility studies. Develop detailed and realistic computer models to simulate the performance of the system and for the purpose of optimal selection of its parameters. Design and fabricate a prototype of the developed non-GPS local position and orientation coordinate referencing system for laboratory and range testing. Demonstrate the performance of the developed non-GPS local position and orientation coordinate referencing system in controlled field tests.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The development of a non-GPS local full position and orientation coordinate referencing system has a wide range of military, homeland security and commercial applications. In the military related areas, the developed position and orientation referencing system enable smart munitions, weapon platforms, vehicles, forward observer and warfighter to have a common accurate, reliable and secure position as well as orientation referencing system. The referencing system can then be used for guidance and control of all smart munitions, missiles and guided bombs as well ground and airborne weapon platforms with minimal error due to the use of a single position and orientation referencing system. The developed position and orientation referencing system also has homeland security and commercial applications for guidance and control systems of various, robotic systems, particularly those used for remote operation in hazardous environments, which may be encountered in homeland defense, and for almost all mobile robotic applications used in the industry for materials handling and other similar applications. Commercial applications also include material handling equipment such as cranes; loading equipment, particularly in the sea; and industrial equipment used in assembly, welding, inspection, and other similar operations.

REFERENCES:

1. Sensory Systems and Communication for the Detection of Rotational and Translational Position of Objects in Flight, Carlos M. Pereira, TACOM-ARDEC publication.

2. Intelligent Sensing and Wireless Communications in Harsh Environments, Carlos M. Pereira, Michael Mattice, Robert C. Testa, Presented at the Smart Materials and MEMS Symposium, Newport Beach, California, March 2000.

3. Chatfield, A. B., 1997, Fundamentals of High Accuracy Inertial Navigation, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

4. Grewal, M. S., Weill, L. R., and Andrews, A. P., 2000, Global Positioning Systems, Inertial Navigation, and Integration, John Wiley & Sons.

5. Lawrence, A., 1998, Modern Inertial Technology: Navigation, Guidance, and Control, Mechanical Engineering Series, 2nd edition, Springer Verlag.

6. Balanis, C. A., 1989, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

7. Wehner, D. R., and Barnes, B., 1994, High-Resolution Radar, Artech House.

KEYWORDS: Coordinate Referencing Systems; Position and Orientation Referencing Systems; Position and Orientation Sensors; Guided Munitions; Smart Munitions; Guidance and Control Systems

A18-015

TITLE: Transforming 3D Reconnaissance Data into Geospatial Intelligence

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Information Systems

OBJECTIVE: To design, analyze, and implement new algorithms and a software system for streaming and processing 3D reconnaissance data for enabling large-scale Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) operations in the low altitude urban-suburban airspace.

DESCRIPTION: Current Army, DoD, and civilian capabilities for site exploration missions in urban-suburban areas, especially reconnaissance and rescue operations, are inaccurate,heavy, expensive, dangerous, and time consuming. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)could potentially provide real-time military reconnaissance, fire and rescue, law enforcement, and other first-responders with important new ways to enhance mission effectiveness and reduce operational costs. While the small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles needed for such missions are now available at reasonable cost, the navigational and control systems and associated software required to conduct such coordinated, precision autonomous operations in low altitude urban and suburban airspaces are not yet available. This is because current state-of-the-art systems rely heavily on the U.S. NAVSTAR global positioning system (GPS) and global navigation satellite system (GNSS). However, in low altitude urban and suburban airspaces the high density of obstacles and the presence of people necessitate a degree of navigational precision and reliability that cannot be met by GPS, which can have limited precision near buildings, or existing “sense and avoid” technologies. Software tools and algorithmic techniques not dependent on GPS are necessary for UAS navigation in the urban-suburban airspace.

One such technique is three dimensional (3D) map-matching. 3D map-matching is a navigational basis that is orthogonal to radio navigation and consequently does not suffer from the same limitations and vulnerabilities of GPS. Early 2.5D map matching systems such as TERCOM (Terrain Contour Matching), were effectively employed in cruise missile navigation prior to GPS. The ability to pre-acquire detailed 3D geospatial data has increased exponentially since the time of TERCOM. Moreover, commodity sensors are now available which generate real-time point-clouds that could potentially be matched to the pre-acquired 3D geospatial data to provide rapid, precise localization in many GPS denied environments.

However, two problems have slowed the evolution of efficient 3D map-match solutions. First, because the 3D geospatial data sets are so large, it can be difficult to transmit and maintain them over bandwidth and latency constrained networks using conventional data delivery approaches. Second, processing of these massive 3D datasets by 3D map-matching algorithms can be very inefficient because the matching algorithm is typically forced to process a large amount of occluded data that is irrelevant to the immediate 3D map-match localization solution. This is especially true in densely occluded natural terrains or within the urban canyon.

The ultimate goal is the design of algorithmic techniques resulting in a software system that can overcome the delivery and processing problems of 3D map-matching and efficiently stream 3D reconnaissance data over constrained networks and use this data to perform precise localization for UAS to navigate in suburban and urban terrains. This software system should be able to encode these massive 3D data sets or some subset sufficiently necessary for navigation purposes, including geometric visibility, of previously obtained 3D maps of the urban terrain and efficiently transmit this data to the UAS navigational system in real time. Then the system should be able to match the current sensor-derived ground truth obtained by the UAS sensors to the streamed 3D representation, also in real time, to enable instant, on-demand access to timely and detailed 3D data for analysis, mission planning, mission rehearsal, and battle damage
assessment.

Besides enhancing military operations, such a system would have a wide variety of civilian uses such as fire and rescue, law enforcement, and other first-responder situations making it highly viable as a commercial product. Such software could easily be licensed for both military and civilian purposes or marketed as a single software package.

PHASE I: This portion of the effort will consist of identifying robust and mathematically consistent computational approaches to stream 3D reconnaissance data and perform precise localization for UAS navigation. This can be accomplished by (1) investigating and recommending or developing efficient techniques to stream massive 3D data sets of previously obtained 3D maps of the urban terrain to the UAS navigational system in real time and (2) investigating and recommending or developing appropriate techniques to match sensor-derived ground truth to the streamed 3D representation, also in real time. Then conduct a proof-of-concept simulation of each of the above.

PHASE II: Using the results from Phase I, the effort will be to build a robust, scalable software system for streaming 3D reconnaissance data and perform precise localization for UAS navigation. This can be accomplished by (1) implementing the technique from Phase I to stream massive 3D data sets of previously obtained 3D maps of the urban terrain to the UAS navigational system in real time, (2) implementing the technique from Phase I to match sensor-derived ground truth to the streamed 3D representation, also in real time, and (3) incorporating the above into a single software system. In addition, a comprehensive set of software documentation will be prepared and made available for users and a long-term program for maintenance and subsequent improvement of the software will be created.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The outcome of this effort would be the development of a software system for transforming and streaming 3D reconnaissance data and performing precise localization for UAS navigation that contains significantly more information than video, but which requires less bandwidth. By combining sensor-based, data driven navigation and efficient continuous remapping, this effort could realize a scalable, sustainable, and deliverable representation of any environment and enable important new capabilities in autonomous navigation and intelligent tactical maneuvering.

Consequently, this effort could increase the speed and reduce the cost of processing, exploiting, and disseminating 3D geospatial data for both military and civilian operations in urban and suburban settings such as reconnaissance, fire and rescue, law enforcement, and other first-responder activities. The firm will follow-up on appropriate marketing and licensing opportunities from collaborations and contacts developed during earlier phases. The company will set up a support service for both existing and new users capable of addressing installation issues and correcting bugs. This will include creating a web site with the latest news, FAQs, user' forum, etc.

REFERENCES:

1. P. Agarwal and R. Sharathkumar, “Streaming algorithms for extent problems in high dimensions,” Proc. 21st Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 2010.

2. C. Poullis and S. You, “3D Reconstruction of Urban Areas,” Proc. of IEEE 3D Imaging, Modeling, Processing, Visualization, and Transmission (3DPVT), May 2011

3. J. Huang and S. You, “Point Cloud Matching based on 3D Self-Similarity,” Proc. of IEEE CVPR Workshop on Point Cloud Processing, June 16, 2012

4. Stump, Ethan, et al. "Visibility-Based Deployment of Robot Formations for Communication Maintenance" ICRA, IEEE Intel. Conference, 2011

5. Ji Zhang and Sanjiv Singh, "LOAM: Lidar Odometry and Mapping in Real-time," Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, July, 2014.

KEYWORDS: 3D map-matching, 3D reconnaissance data, streaming, Unmanned Aerial Systems navigation, low altitude urban airspace, GPS denied environment

A18-016

TITLE: Production of energy dense synthetic chemicals from biomass upgrade

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Materials/Processes

OBJECTIVE: To develop innovative materials and process for biomass upgrade prototype by foraging indigenous lignocellulosic biomass.

DESCRIPTION: Range and endurance are major concerns on today’s robotic & autonomous systems (RAS) for both civilian and military applications. The mission duration of current RAS is limited by how much fuel or batteries they can carry. There is no built-in fuel generation in current design; consequently, the typical operation duration for a single mission is limited to about 20 to 30 minutes. As noted in the position paper from Maneuver Center of Excellence [1], the Army needs new technology to improve the sustainment of future combat vehicle. To address this challenge we need new compact energy harvesting fuel generators that generate high energy density fuel-like chemicals from indigenous biomass such as lignocellulosic biomass. The main technical challenges are that this new compact generator needs to be transportable and be able to convert various feedstock composition with different moisture content at a fast reaction rate.

To address these challenges, Army seeks innovative approach to upgrade indigenous biomass to energy-dense chemical. Typical energy density of indigenous biomass is less than 20 MJ/kg, which is much less than that of military jet fuel (42 MJ/kg). There are several approaches that are previously investigated, including pyrolysis, deoxygenation, and hydrodecarboxylation [2]. These prior approaches were relevant for industrial scale. But the Army needs new materials and processes that would be relevant for RAS that do not create an additional logistics tail problem of high purity hydrogen and other consumables. The small business, in their proposal, will describe approaches of their own choosing to solve the problems. The project shall lead to a fabrication of a biomass upgrade prototype unit with less than volume of 30 L and dry weight of 30 kg. And the unit shall convert at least 1 kg biomass per hour to produce energy-dense chemical product with specific energy density between 30 and 40 MJ/kg. The energy efficiency of biomass upgrade shall be demonstrated to be between 15-20%. The energy efficiency of biomass upgrade is defined as (energy of chemical product) /(energy of biomass feed).

The small business first shall conduct feasibility of their selected biomass upgrade approach in Phase I. Then the small business design, fabricate and verify biomass upgrade prototype unit in Phase II. Finally, the small business shall transition the biomass upgrade technology for commercialization to industry and possible Army applications in Phase III. Such technology shall be able both to generate energy-dense chemical product by doubling the energy density of the biomass raw materials (<20 MJ/kg) and to generate even electrical power. Civilian commercialization of the biomass upgrade technology could potentially impact recycling industry of yard waste, as well as outdoor tools and equipment industry through fuel oil generation from yard waste such as leaves and grass.