H
ere are the previous IAI news,
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December 2008: IAI Helps the Community
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December 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract entitled “Building a Trust-Aware Dynamic Routing Solution for Wireless Sensor Networks.”
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December 2008: Naval Sea Systems Command awards IAI a new contract entitled “The Visualization Training Assistant.”
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November 2008: U.S. Army CECOM awards IAI a new contract entitled “Multi-Agent Based Middleware Framework for QoS Traffic Manager.”
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November 2008: U.S. Army C-E LCMC awards IAI a new contract entitled “HIMAC: Hybrid and Integrated Multicast Admission Control.”
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November 2008: U.S. Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) awards IAI a new contract entitled “An Efficient Distributed Framework for Adaptive Service Discovery in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks.”
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November 2008: Air Force Office of Scientific Research awards IAI a new I contract entitled “A Miniature RFID Sensor for Biological Warfare Agents (BWAS) Detection.”
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October 2008: IAI Announces Dr. Vikram Manikonda as New President
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October 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract entitled “Information Geometric Network Architecture for Heterogeneous Network Management.”
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October 2008: Navy awards IAI a new contract entitled “Relative Ultra Tight IMU/GPS Integration.”
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August 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “Auto-Tracking Steerable Laser Range Finder.”
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August 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “Ultra-Wideband, Low-Profile, Electrically-Small Antennas Utilizing Artificial Magnetic Conductors.”
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August 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Model Based Simulation of Effect of Complex Terrain in Network Performance Using Efficient Ray Tracing.”
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July 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract entitled “Ultrasonic Guided Wave Ring Array for Micro-Structural Level Damage Monitoring.”
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July 2008: NIST awards IAI a Purchase Order entitled “Proposal to conduct research measurement services for extending NIST programs in the application and development of systems for topographic measurements of bullets and casings for ballistics identification.”
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July 2008: Optimal Synthesis, Inc. awards IAI a new NASA NRA subcontract “Open-Source Based Software Systems for Linking Disparate Software Components.”
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July 2008: MDA awards IAI a new “Agent-Based Multi-Missile Inspection Simulation Tool Using Distributed Pursuit-Evasion Game.”
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June 2008: OSD awards IAI a new “Agent-based Trusted Querying Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks.”
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June 2008: Navy awards IAI a new contract “Multimedia Over Highly Dynamic Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: A Cross Layer Collaborative Approach.”
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May 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract “Integrated Graphical Models for Efficient and Practical Network Attack Damage.”
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May 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract entitled “Wireless On-Engine Health Monitoring of Integrally Bladed Rotor.”
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May 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Shared Intelligence Framework Targeting Flexible Human Agent Cooperative Tasks.”
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May 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Distributed Cluster-based Emulation Test Bed for Large Wireless Communication Networks.”
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May 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract entitled “An Integrated Robust and Auto-Configurable Network Service Protocol Suite for Wireless Airborne Networks.”
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May 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract entitled “Calibration Standards for Thermosonic Nondestructive Evaluation.”
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April 2008: DARPA awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Mixed Initiative Approach to Human-Robot Interaction for "Through-the-door" Operation.”
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April 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “Integrated Aiding and Training.”
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April 2008: Wright Patterson Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “Multi-Functional Sensing Platform for UAV With Dual-Polarization and Microphysics-based Hazard Monitoring.”
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April 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “A Cross-Layer Approach for Reliable Communication in Airborne Networks.”
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March 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled "A UWB-based Secure and Robust Wireless Data Network."
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March 2008: Intelligent Automation Incorporated featured in a report published on March 5th 2008 by the National Research Council of the National Academies entitled: “Ballistic Imaging.”
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February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled entitled “Low-Cost Hybrid Tap-Echo Technique for Kissing Bond Inspection.”
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February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new BAA contract entitled entitled “ARTeMUS: Agile Robot Teams for Mobile Networking in Urban Settings.”
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February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled entitled “Semantic-Based Authorization and Access Framework for the Virtual Enterprise (SAAFVE).”
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February 2008: MDA awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “Seamlessly Integrated GNC Algorithms for Multi-Missile Interception.”
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February 2008: MDA awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “A Hierarchical Battle Management and Planning Aid Framework For Effective Situational Awareness in Stressful, Time Critical and Collaborative Environments.”
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February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “A Psychophysiological and Performance Based Prediction System for Adaptive Aiding.”
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February 2008: Army awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “An Integrated Architecture for Seamless Soft Handoff in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.”
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January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “ACES Model Composition and Development Toolkit to Support NGATS Concepts.”
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January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “An Integrated Human System Interaction (HSI) Framework for Human-Agent Team Collaboration.”
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January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “A Simulation Testbed for Dynamic Air Corridors within the Next Generation Air Transportation System.”
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January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Reconfigurable L-Band Radar Transceiver Using Digital Signal Synthesis.”
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January 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Secure Routing in Airborne Networks.”
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January 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Adaptive Simple Sequencing Instruction Support Toolkit (ASSIST).”
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January 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Nonlinear Elastic Waves Spectroscopy (NEWS) for non-destructive inspection and detection of the subsurface cracks and flaws.”
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January 2008: DHS awards IAI a new contract for the project called “"Eye-Safe" Laser-Induced-Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) for Standoff Explosive Detection.”
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January 2008: DHS awards IAI a new contract for the project called “A Novel Peak Detection and Data Fusion Methodology for Multidimensional Chemical Analysis.”
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January 2008: DHS awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Securing Network Access in Wireless Sensor Networks Supporting Industrial Control System.”
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January 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract for the project called “High Performance Parallel Signal Processor with SDK for Advanced Communications.”
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January 2008: Army awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “COSMOS: Composable, Systematic Cross Layer Design based on Multi-layer Optimization Strategies.”
December 2008: IAI Helps the Community
IAI has made a donation this month in each staff member’s name to their selected charity. A total of over $5,000 has been donated to the following organizations:
December 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract entitled “Building a Trust-Aware Dynamic Routing Solution for Wireless Sensor Networks.”
To fully achieve the performance goal of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), sensor nodes need to cooperate in data collection and routing. However, sensor nodes are faced with a variety of risks due to the harsh operation environments. For example, nodes may misbehave by agreeing to forward packets, but failing to do it later, since they are selfish, malicious, or broken. The current routing protocols either have no security consideration at all based on the fundamental assumption that the sensor nodes will cooperate and not cheat, or focus on the efficient use of cryptographic mechanisms to authenticate routing packets. We argue that the conventional view of security based on cryptography and authentication alone is not sufficient to provide a complete solution for developing trustworthy sensor networks, due to the unique characteristics and novel misbehaviors encountered in WSNs. In this proposal Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes a Trust-Aware dynamic Routing Framework (TARF) for WSNs. The proposed solution will work as a complementary to the cryptography based approaches. Our intent is to incorporate theories of trust from social networks into sensor networks in order to provide a reliable and trustworthy routing path in the dynamic WSN environment with both system and environmental uncertainties.
December 2008: Naval Sea Systems Command awards IAI a new contract entitled “The Visualization Training Assistant.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for the proposal named “The Visualization Training Assistant.” For Visualization Training Phase II, Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) and Lockheed Martin will construct training that helps technicians visualize the operation of the equipment they maintain. Phase I studies revealed that even though technicians use Electronic Technical Manuals (ETM), expert technicians use their visualization to understand the rationale of the procedures directed by the ETM. The visualization training will apply principles from visualization research which demonstrate that trainees learn to visualize equipment operation better when they are asked to perform tasks that lead them to mentally animate their mental models, rather than when they simply watch an animation of an expert’s mental model. Additionally the training will be adaptive: trainees’ instruction will adapt to their assessed level of capability, and the difficulties that they would be expected to need to overcome to perform more accurately and efficiently. For Phase II, we will apply these training principles to MCE training. For Phase III, we plan to apply our methods developed in Phase II for training technicians to maintain and use CR3.
November 2008: U.S. Army CECOM awards IAI a new contract entitled “Multi-Agent Based Middleware Framework for QoS Traffic Manager.”
IAI receives a new contract from the U.S. Army CECOM for the proposal named “Multi-Agent Based Middleware Framework for QoS Traffic Manager.” We present a hardware, vendor and platform independent management framework providing Quality of Service (QoS) in coordination with the management policies. The proposed architecture is a unifying framework applicable across all organizations with diverse capabilities and constraints. This is achieved by capitalizing the synergies that arise within the integration of the Web Services Management (WSM) technologies and the Multi-agents Systems (MAS) for the specific goal of coordinated QoS traffic management. Specifically, the managed resources are first described and offered directly by resource access interfaces under the web services management platform. Hence, the resources are transformed into managed web services that can participate directly in service oriented architecture (SOA). However, WSM technologies do not specify the exact management mechanisms about how the web services can be managed. We provide this required intelligence needed for the effective management of web services by making use of multi-agent systems as MAS enable intelligent operations, interactions, coordination and cooperation between autonomous components.
November 2008: U.S. Army C-E LCMC awards IAI a new contract entitled “HIMAC: Hybrid and Integrated Multicast Admission Control.”
IAI receives a new contract from the U.S. Army C-E LCMC for the proposal named “HIMAC: Hybrid and Integrated Multicast Admission Control.” Providing multicast admission control in ad hoc networks is extremely challenging. In this proposal, we present a hybrid and integrated multicast admission control (HIMAC) mechanism to address this challenging problem. In essence, we propose some novel approaches to address some fundamental problems in ad hoc networks. In the proposed solution, we adopt hybrid methods to estimate the available bandwidth of different types of networks. We propose a measurement-based approach to estimate the available bandwidth for backbone networks and a model-driven approach for ad hoc networks. Both of these approaches are light–weight, non-intrusive and accurate in the targeted networks. In order to make the model-based bandwidth estimation approach work correctly in ad hoc networks, we propose a novel approach to model the effect of wireless interference on loss rate. This model overcomes the limits of existing works and is feasible for real networks. Moreover, this model, in conjunction with the efficient and comprehensive inference method proposed in our solution, derives an accurate and realistic interference pattern for real networks.
November 2008: U.S. Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) awards IAI a new contract entitled “An Efficient Distributed Framework for Adaptive Service Discovery in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks.”
IAI receives a new contract from the U.S. Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) for the proposal named ““An Efficient Distributed Framework for Adaptive Service Discovery in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks.” The key innovation of this proposal is the development of a distributed service discovery framework which employs simple yet elegant mechanisms to deliver comprehensive solutions for service advertisement, discovery and access in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Our framework employs peer-to-peer caching to facilitate cross platform collaborations and service discovery. In addition, we propose to use our unique service evaluation and differentiation model provides a comprehensive and systematic approach to comparing and evaluating discovered services. Mobile nodes within the network differentiate between services based on characteristics such as levels of service demand, presence or lack of specific service features/attributes and communication and transaction costs. Furthermore, to facilitate the evaluation process and further enhance service discovery we propose to use semantic service descriptions associated with a set of novel protocols to facilitate advertisement dissemination.
November 2008: Air Force Office of Scientific Research awards IAI a new I contract entitled “A Miniature RFID Sensor for Biological Warfare Agents (BWAS) Detection.”
IAI receives a new I contract from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for the proposal named “A Miniature RFID Sensor for Biological Warfare Agents (BWAS) Detection.” The current program aims to develop a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) sensor system to identify fermentors used for BWAs growth. BWAs may have many very different molecular structures/ mutations, but one antibody is only efficient for one type of BWA. Instead of have one sensor detecting each type of Anthrax, We plan to design molecular taggants such as DNA aptamers and Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) to detect the BWAs byproduct, which are present in the growth media and have fewer variations in molecular structures, to assess whether a fermentor is used for BWAs production. During this Phase II project, we will design, fabricate, and characterize a novel miniature RFID sensor for detection in liquid solution. We will also develop a compact and portable RFID reader that allows interrogation of the RFID sensor from a safe stand-off distance clandestinely. Intelligent Automation, Inc. will team up with University of California, Davis, to conduct this research. The proposed BWAs sensor system is critical to enable military and homeland security personnel to identify potential bioterrorism attacks and take timely actions to mitigate dangers.
October 2008: IAI Announces Dr. Vikram Manikonda as New President
Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Vikram Manikonda, as President of IAI. IAI’s Board of Directors notes Dr. Manikonda’s dedication to the objectives and values of IAI, his extraordinary technical strength, his outstanding performance in building enduring relationships with clients, industry and academic partners, and his demonstrated leadership. Dr. Leonard Haynes, IAI’s founder and President for 22 years, who will now serve as President Emeritus, states “IAI could not have a better person serving in this role. His dedication to IAI, technical leadership and business values are exactly the right thing at the right time for IAI.”
As President of IAI, Dr. Manikonda will be responsible for developing and managing IAI’s technical direction and will work on long term strategic planning with the CEO. Dr. Joseph E. Schwartz will continue as IAI’s Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Jacqueline Haynes will continue as Chairman of the Board and Executive Vice President.
Dr. Manikonda received his B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, India, in 1992. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Maryland at College Park, in 1994 and 1997, respectively. His research over the last decade has spanned nonlinear and geometric control, motion description languages, robotics, and the application of multi-agent systems agents to simulation, distributed control, and air traffic control and management. Dr. Manikonda joined IAI in 1999. He was named Director of IAI’s Distributed Intelligent Systems Group in 2001 and its Vice President in 2004.
October 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract entitled “Information Geometric Network Architecture for Heterogeneous Network Management.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “Information Geometric Network Architecture for Heterogeneous Network Management.” We present a unifying architecture for modeling, optimization and design for heterogeneous networks that can effectively address the existing limitations inherited from the generalized network utility maximization (GNUM) framework. In general, GNUM framework is a unifying mathematical model as it combines different objectives and constraints from different layers into a single global optimization formulation. The solution to this optimization problem automatically provides the benchmark for all layering schemes and hence is the ultimate upper bound on the overall performance of the network. However, GNUM lacks vital components to effectively formulate the realities observed in heterogeneous networks. In this work, we address the key issue of nonconvexity observed in many GNUM formulations. We propose a new perspective to analyze and discover decomposition structures that the GNUM problems exhibit. Theory of Information Geometry and in particular Differential Geometry is central to our approach as we make use of the geometric properties of the problem that can lead to valuable insights and lessons regarding the general structure of the GNUM problems. It is believed that the proposed architecture by innovatively incorporating the theory of Information Geometry into to GNUM formulation potentially provides the necessary tool currently missing for effective management of heterogeneous networks.
October 2008: Navy awards IAI a new contract entitled “Relative Ultra Tight IMU/GPS Integration.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Navy for the proposal named “Relative Ultra Tight IMU/GPS Integration.” Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes a novel ultra tightly integrated IMU/GPS system where two or more integrated IMU/GPS units send their raw observation as well as IMU measurements for relative positioning. In this proposed method we develop a new GPS receiver based on IAI’s Cooperative RAKE receiver that is capable of significantly reducing the effect of multipath induced error by tracking each discernable multipath and line of sight signal on each RAKE finger independently. In addition to this, the integrated IMU/GPS algorithm uses the PLL tracking loop to generate and track GPS signal. Once a GPS satellite (channel) is lost this generated GPS signal will be used as the input to the receiver so that the PLL continuously track the lost channel. This allows a very narrowband filter for the PLL with very fast carrier recovery and tracking when the lost channel is regained. Even in the case of total GPS blackout a high accuracy IMU is used for generating GPS signal for the input of the receiver for an interval of time which depends on the performance of the IMU.
August 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “Auto-Tracking Steerable Laser Range Finder.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Army for the proposal named “Auto-Tracking Steerable Laser Range Finder.” The next generation of infantry weapons will include small arms equipped with sophisticated Target Acquisition/Fire Control systems (TA/FC). In order to provide a correct solution, a TA/FC system needs accurate range information to their target. This information is provided by a laser range finder (LRF), but it is up to the soldier to accurately aim the laser range finder. The current problem is that threat targets are moving and seek cover behind objects (in defilade). Moreover, sixty percent of the aiming involves a soldier standing in an unsupported firing position. These conditions make it extremely difficult for a soldier to obtain an accurate range to a target. The purpose of this proposed project is to develop a TA/FC system platform with an integrated auto-tracking steerable range finder. Two main areas of development will be the focus of our efforts: to upgrade the hardware performance and to improve the target detection and tracking performance. In addition, a key objective of the proposed project is to endow the proposed TA/FC system with the capability to interface with the CDAS network. The main goal of this integration is to have the capability to hand off and receive target information from the CDAS network.
August 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “Ultra-Wideband, Low-Profile, Electrically-Small Antennas Utilizing Artificial Magnetic Conductors.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Army for the proposal named “Ultra-Wideband, Low-Profile, Electrically-Small Antennas Utilizing Artificial Magnetic Conductors.” The proposed miniaturized antenna takes advantage of two innovations. These include the novel antenna design concept of coupled sectorial loops and a wideband artificial magnetic conductor substrate utilizing a combination of dielectric and ferromagnetic (ferrite) materials. At its lowest frequency of operation, a coupled sectorial loop antenna (CSLA) can be designed to have maximum dimensions of 0.1?m´0.35?m (where ?m is the wavelength at the lowest frequency of operation) with impedance bandwidths in excess of 10:1. In this proposed work, we will take advantage of the wideband properties offered by the CSLA concept and utilize various modified miniaturized versions of this antenna as the starting point to further decrease its lowest frequency of operation (or equivalently its electrical dimensions). Moreover, we will utilize a wideband artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) substrate and a composite feeding scheme to even further reduce the lowest frequency of operation of the antenna without increasing its occupied area. This will result in an electrically small antenna with maximum dimensions of 0.05?0´0.15?0 with an impedance bandwidth ranging from 300 MHz to 3.0 GHz.
August 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Model Based Simulation of Effect of Complex Terrain in Network Performance Using Efficient Ray Tracing.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Army for the proposal named “A Model Based Simulation of Effect of Complex Terrain in Network Performance Using Efficient Ray Tracing.” Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes a model based simulation approach to simulate the effect of complex terrain, radio transmission, and interference in network performance. The main technical difficulty in developing such a simulation environment is the complex computational tasks that each node needs to take in order to simulate the physical layer. Therefore, unless we statistically model: 1- the effect of complex terrain and its changes in the channel impulse response (CIR), 2- the effect of CIR in the bit error rate (BER) of the received signal, and 3- interference sources, then building even a small-to-medium size wireless network simulator that accurately models the physical layer is impossible.
July 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract entitled “Ultrasonic Guided Wave Ring Array for Micro-Structural Level Damage Monitoring.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “Ultrasonic Guided Wave Ring Array for Micro-Structural Level Damage Monitoring.” Corrosion and cracking in aerospace structure materials is a common problem. Early detection of failures is desired for structural safety. Most existing structural health monitoring (SHM) and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques focus on detecting the damage of sizes beyond a certain threshold. We propose to design a SHM system for monitoring the material degradation in a micro-structural level before the real defect initiates. The proposed SHM system embeds ultrasonic guided wave sensor array for data acquisition and robust software for fault diagnosis/prognosis. It can achieve reliable detection of micromechanical damages with low false alarms and be able to localize the defect position and monitor its growth.
July 2008: NIST awards IAI a Purchase Order entitled “Proposal to conduct research measurement services for extending NIST programs in the application and development of systems for topographic measurements of bullets and casings for ballistics identification.”
July 2008: Optimal Synthesis, Inc. awards IAI a new NASA NRA subcontract “Open-Source Based Software Systems for Linking Disparate Software Components.”
July 2008: MDA awards IAI a new “Agent-Based Multi-Missile Inspection Simulation Tool Using Distributed Pursuit-Evasion Game.”
IAI receives a new contract from the MDA for the proposal named “Agent-Based Multi-Missile Inspection Simulation Tool Using Distributed Pursuit-Evasion Game.” In the Phase I effort, IAI, its consultant, Dr. Jose B. Cruz, Jr., and Lockheed Martin MS2 have proposed and implemented agent based game theoretic multiple missile defense simulation tool and support algorithms. The simulation tools support: 1) clear comparison and evaluation of different missile interception strategies; 2) High performance guidance strategy which can seamlessly work on both midcourse and terminal interceptions; 3) Efficient resource management algorithm which can optimally deal with interceptor deployment, weapon/sensor allocation, launching waves, etc. 4) Improvement of estimation accuracy for different complex clutter environments; 5) Better integration of different modules of guidance, estimation, resource management, knowledge base, etc. 6) User-friendly comparison and evaluation of different missile interception strategies. In Phase 2, we will refine and significantly expand our framework, especially the game theoretic resource management and Differential Game Guidance law type M algorithm. We will also leverage our existing experience on joint ATR and tracking to develop an end to end simulation prototype, which will be made available to MDA and AFRL. We will also team with Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors to perform test.
June 2008: OSD awards IAI a new “Agent-based Trusted Querying Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks.”
IAI receives a new contract from the OSD for the proposal named “Agent-based Trusted Querying Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks.” Corresponding to the increasing trends of using sensor network for the daily operations in both commercial and defense sectors, designing an efficient query processing mechanism for wireless sensor networks has also been paid attentions. While recent research efforts on database based query processing approach dramatically improves the efficiency of query processing, another critical component, security, is still missing. In reality, the sensor networks are expected to be deployed in various hostile environments, for example, battlefield, and these unattended wireless sensors are faced with a variety of risks and can easily be hijacked or compromised. Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes a novel Agent-based Trusted Querying Framework (ATQF). The intent of this work is to incorporate theories of trust from social networks into sensor networks in order to provide a trusted query processing infrastructure that returns the highest-fidelity response to the end-nodes of a sensor network. One significant difference between the proposed approach and traditional reputation-based trust models is that the trustworthiness is not only evaluated from the Reputation, but also takes the Risk into account. We will show that adding the Risk value into the trust management model make the scheme more efficient and accurate.
June 2008: Navy awards IAI a new contract “Multimedia Over Highly Dynamic Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: A Cross Layer Collaborative Approach.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Navy for the proposal named “Multimedia Over Highly Dynamic Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: A Cross Layer Collaborative Approach.” A novel framework for multimedia communications over highly dynamic MANETs is proposed. The proposed framework is model-based and has many virtues such as scalability, self-organization, and self-healing, just name a few. To develop such a framework, significant theoretical and simulation efforts need to be made in cross-layer optimization, multipath routing of multimedia over the low-bandwidth MANETs, and performance evaluation.
In our approach, we propose a novel cross-layer optimization approach to take QoS into account at MAC, network, transport, and application layers for multipath routing of multimedia over MANET; A Multiple Description (MD) coding technique will be integrated to offer great potential for video communications over military MANETs under extreme conditions. A novel model-based simulation infrastructure with an integrated executable modeling solution across multiple design abstraction layers will be built to facilitate the operational specification, design, and development simulation of the class of content-driven distributed applications. Finally, a video quality evaluation framework will be developed to efficiently assess the quality of transmitted video based mainly on frame decoding errors.
May 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract “Integrated Graphical Models for Efficient and Practical Network Attack Damage.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for the proposal named “Integrated Graphical Models for Efficient and Practical Network Attack Damage.” We propose integrated graphical models for automatic network attack damage assessment. The model development is divided into two levels. At the lower level, the focus is on network/system security analysis, and the unique graphical models we develop are called attack graphs. Our proposed attack graph model is scalable, practical, powerful in analysis, and can efficiently provide situational awareness, prediction into the future, and optimized action planning. At the higher level, the graphical models capture the inherent dependency relationships of applications on networks/systems, and of missions on applications. By separating the modeling process and introducing the interfaces for integration, our proposed approach enables independent graphical model development at different levels and at the same time ensures interoperability. In Phase II, we will develop these technologies rigorously, which will provide powerful capabilities spanning from situational awareness and what-if analysis to damage assessment and action planning, in both top-down and bottom-up fashion. To our best knowledge, this is the first work that supports dynamic security analysis and integrates different levels of graphical models for coherent enterprise-wide network attack damage assessment. The developed models will be implemented into an automated software tool to aid the administrators in normal and attack situations.
May 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract entitled “Wireless On-Engine Health Monitoring of Integrally Bladed Rotor.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “Wireless On-Engine Health Monitoring of Integrally Bladed Rotor.” The ability to sustain turbine engine IBRs in a safe and affordable manner is critical. IBRs usually operate in a harsh environment, experience high centrifugal and thermal stresses. Cumulative microscopic cracks at critical loading areas, if not detected and repaired in time, may lead to a catastrophic disk or blade burst and thus engine failure. This proposal tries to address the health management issue of IBR from the inspection and microcrack detection point of view, which is the basis for life prediction and repair.
We propose a wireless on-engine health monitoring approach. It applies light, thin film patch transducers to the IBR and inspects rotor for small cracks and embedded flaws. The signal is coupled wirelessly to the sensor patch so that the inspection can be done even when the IBR is rotating. The envisioned system has minimal effect on the rotor performance, instantaneously provides reliable and quantitative data such as crack location and severity level; minimizes and eventually eliminates the need for engine disassembly for purely inspection purpose.
May 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Shared Intelligence Framework Targeting Flexible Human Agent Cooperative Tasks.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Army for the proposal named “A Shared Intelligence Framework Targeting Flexible Human Agent Cooperative Tasks.” High quality decisions in military and commercial operations often require the combined intelligence of multiple agents, whose knowledge, expertise, and capabilities are complementary. Cooperative decision making and problem solving is hard for people who have different languages, priorities, and incentives, and is even more difficult with the participation of non-human agents with inscrutable behaviors to people. A fundamental challenge is in developing artificial agents that collaborate in a natural way with humans in order to utilize individual expertise to benefit the whole. Our innovation is a shared intelligence framework, a constrained, but still widely-applicable, role of human agent collaboration (HAC), for managing human-agent teams and ultimately facilitating both human-agent cooperative tasks and human-to-human activity coordination. Our approach addresses the overall problem of cooperative intelligent behavior by splitting it into two sections, where collaborative decision-making falls on the shoulders of human experts who work together (possibly through agent intermediaries), but where the generation and flexible adaptation of the expert team is conducted through HAC.
May 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Distributed Cluster-based Emulation Test Bed for Large Wireless Communication Networks.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Army for the proposal named “A Distributed Cluster-based Emulation Test Bed for Large Wireless Communication Networks.” In this proposal, we propose an innovative technical approach for developing a real-time scalable emulation test bed for large wireless communication networks. Our approach has four main advantages: 1) it uses radio model with configurable fidelity levels (packet level and detailed signal level) according to user’s preference; 2) the emulation architecture is scalable to support large wireless networks. We adopt clustering technique to manage up to thousands of radios in the emulation network in real-time. All wireless nodes are clustered into multiple groups, and each group and the communication activities within the group is managed by a single cluster server. Inter-cluster activities are handled by cooperation of different cluster servers; 3) the emulation network also works with user interactions and environmental data, such as weather and terrain data; 4) it provides both perceptual and statistical evaluation results. Users can connect real communication terminal devices into the emulation network and run any type of network applications, including audio/video streams, and evaluate those applications by the actual usage experience.
May 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract entitled “An Integrated Robust and Auto-Configurable Network Service Protocol Suite for Wireless Airborne Networks.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for the proposal named “An Integrated Robust and Auto-Configurable Network Service Protocol Suite for Wireless Airborne Networks.” The envisioned Airbone Network (AN) is expected to provide seamless connectivity for a large number of applications, which require proper network service support. Our Phase I efforts present a basic version of an integrated architecture for network service. In Phase II, we will further refine the architecture by including new service elements, aiming to develop a complete solution for network services in ANs. The network services we will address include address configuration, name resolution, time synchronization, security services, and policy services. Although not all the network services are described in detail, the proposed integrated architecture is believed to be capable of accommodating other services. The significant advantages of the proposed approach can be summarized as follows: 1) it is impervious to network dynamics; 2) it can operate autonomously without connectivity to ground nodes; 3) the distributed hierarchical network service structure improves scalability, reliability and robustness; and 4) as we implement different services in a common basis, server election, service advertisement/discovery, and service architecture maintenance are performed by the common distributed clustering process, which in turn renders efficiency. To our best knowledge, our work represents the first complete solution that provides robust, scalable, auto-configurable and efficient network service support for ANs.
May 2008: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base awards IAI a new contract entitled “Calibration Standards for Thermosonic Nondestructive Evaluation.”
IAI receives a new contract from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for the proposal named “Calibration Standards for Thermosonic Nondestructive Evaluation.” Laser shock peening (LSP) provides a means to the surface treatment for metals by inducing compressive stress, and prevents fatigue cracks on foreign object damage (FOD)-prone areas such as the leading edges of compressor airfoils in a modern gas turbine. While LSP is a mature and reliable manufacturing process, slight anomalies during the process or variations in material ductility can cause small subsurface cracks to form in the resultant LSP processed material. Most existing NDE techniques are not sensitive enough to detect these cracks. The emerging Thermosonic imaging technique has proven to be capable of detecting very small surface and subsurface cracks formed during the LSP process. To validate the test results and enable the instrumental calibration of a thermosonic imaging system for specific components, calibration standards with real cracks must be produced. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes an innovative approach for the development of calibration standards for thermosonic NDE. The key innovation of the proposed approach is the calibration standard development process, including standard specimen design, real subsurface crack fabrication, calibration, validation, verification, and standard traceability, etc.
April 2008: DARPA awards IAI a new contract entitled “A Mixed Initiative Approach to Human-Robot Interaction for "Through-the-door" Operation.”
IAI receives a new contract from the DARPA for the proposal named “I A Mixed Initiative Approach to Human-Robot Interaction for "Through-the-door" Operation.” We propose an innovative, distributed multi-agent based mixed-initiative planning approach to facilitate true partnership among humans and robots useful in many tactical application environments including “through-the-door” and NIST’s search and rescue scenario. We leverage our distributed control framework (DCF) along with indoor positioning system like Cricket and OpenCV based vision for situational awareness, to coordinate shoulder-to-shoulder team building and provide intelligent support for agile execution. Algorithms wise, IAI will leverage hierarchical task network (HTN) representation to organize the team members and their task allocations efficiently in completely distributed and scalable manner. Additionally, we propose to build cognition models for humans and intent detection for overall optimal team performance. All capabilities required to demonstrate these tactical scenarios beginning with decomposition of tasks among the human and robots while coordinating partners’ actions in decision making will be developed and integrated seamlessly. Our approach is inherently robust and scalable as it leads to significant improvement in human situational awareness and human-robot camaraderie for better coordination and control of different activities required to complete missions in chaotic and disorganized scenarios. We will demonstrate the end to end scenario on distributed control platform (DCF) with multiple sensor and cognition modules readily available at IAI.
April 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “Integrated Aiding and Training.”
IAI receives a new Phase II contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “Integrated Aiding and Training.” Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop the Warfighter Wiki, an innovative approach to collect, store, and present informal knowledge that today is commonly placed in continuity folders. Informal knowledge includes heuristics and knowledge that is tied to particular work situations. While the DoD manages formal knowledge well (in manuals, schoolhouse training, and promotion tests), situated job knowledge is left to expert field users to collect, and to pass on to others who need to learn it. IAI’s expertise in Instructional Design, Web-based technologies, and Artificial Intelligence will enable us to build powerful tools so that the Warfighter Wiki can manage informal knowledge in a very efficient and effective process. Key advantages of our approach are that we are adding features to a tool (a wiki) that already possesses many of the requirements for an informal knowledge repository. We collect content in a structured way, so that job aiding content can also be used for job training. We will build tools using advanced technologies to help users create or refine their job knowledge content. Finally, we are keenly aware that any system that will supplant continuity folders must be easy to use, and must address users’ privacy concerns.
April 2008: Wright Patterson Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “Multi-Functional Sensing Platform for UAV With Dual-Polarization and Microphysics-based Hazard Monitoring.”
IAI receives a new Phase II contract from the Wright Patterson Air Force for the proposal named “Multi-Functional Sensing Platform for UAV With Dual-Polarization and Microphysics-based Hazard Monitoring.” Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) and its subcontractor, The University of Oklahoma (OU), Norman, propose to develop innovative compact multi-channel, multi-polarization X-band weather phased array radar to be deployed on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV). The system is based on integrated microwave technology and embedded digital receivers and has the following capabilities:
- Simultaneous monitoring of weather hazards and air-traffic. The proposed system combines the airborne collision avoidance sensors and the weather monitoring capabilities. The concept fully supports cooperative target detection by incorporating Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and transponder receivers for severe weathers. It also supports non-cooperative target detection and tracking through pulsed-Doppler radar mode, space-time adaptive processing and communicating with ground-based radar systems;
- 3D wind-field profiling based on Antenna Interferometer technology. With the capability of digital-beam-forming and antenna scanning, it is possible for the proposed multi-channel system to perform 3D wind profiling, and measure microburst, windshear and turbulence in real-time.
- Simple and proven hazard detection and classification based on hazard microphysics. Microphysics-based extraction of weather hazard spectrum features greatly simplifies their detection by using a priori knowledge, thus avoiding tremendous ‘data training’ needed with other algorithms. This approach can also calibrate other on-board sensors under instrument meteorological conditions (IMC).
April 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “A Cross-Layer Approach for Reliable Communication in Airborne Networks.”
IAI receives a new Phase II contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “A Cross-Layer Approach for Reliable Communication in Airborne Networks.” In this effort, Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI), with support from its subcontractors and consultants, proposes an innovative approach for achieving reliable wireless communications in Airborne Network environment. The technical approach is built on an integrated cross-layer design involving Link layer, Network layer and Transport layer. Having separate innovations at each layer, our approach enables seamless cross-layer information sharing and cooperation, and provides reliable Airborne Network communications for end users. Our approach has the following significant advantages. First, a cross-layer framework with intelligent link management assists information exchanges between different network layers, expedites upper layers’ response to changes of physical links and outside environment, and helps optimize link selections. Second, the approach considers a multi-graph model to capture multiple heterogeneous wireless links of airborne platforms. The graph model, serving as a sound mathematic foundation, allows us to use optimized OSPF to achieve optimal routing decision in Airborne Network’s multi-radio multi-channel environment. Third, we propose a novel multi-TCP implementation at Transport layer. The multi-TCP implementation can switch back and forth between different TCP proposals when loss rate and other link conditions change, thus adapting itself to AN’s ever-changing and extreme link and networking conditions.
March 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled "A UWB-based Secure and Robust Wireless Data Network."
IAI receives a new Phase I contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “A UWB-based Secure and Robust Wireless Data Network.” We propose to design a UWB-based secure and robust wireless data transmission and tracking system for use in a plant environment. The tracking system can automatically track the location of nodes and will greatly increase the accuracy of tracking over current methods. It can penetrate obstacles, making it suitable in the plant environments. It ensures signal level transmission security, low radio frequency emission and interference, and light-weighted automatic tracking. The advantages of using UWB includes: low probability of intercept and low probability of detection, no multi-path interference, no Cosite interference, high tracking accuracy. We also propose a novel and fail-proof authentication method based on the locations of UWB radios to improve security level of the system. The location-based authentication key is impossible for any other radio to obtain without being in the same physical location as the two authorized radios.
March 2008: Intelligent Automation Incorporated featured in a report published on March 5th 2008 by the National Research Council of the National Academies entitled: “Ballistic Imaging.”
The report presents the conclusions of a committee of experts of the National Academies on the “Feasibility, Accuracy and Technical Capability of a National Ballistic Database”. The report included various references to Intelligent Automation’s research on the comparison of bullets and cartridge cases using topographical images. This research was conducted by Intelligent Automation thanks to the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Justice, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled entitled “Low-Cost Hybrid Tap-Echo Technique for Kissing Bond Inspection.”
IAI receives a new Phase II contract from the Air Force for the proposal named entitled “Low-Cost Hybrid Tap-Echo Technique for Kissing Bond Inspection.” Kissing bonds are those bonds maintaining intimate contact but carries no load. The kissing bond is undetectable with conventional nondestructive evaluation techniques because intimate contact allows sound and heat to transfer normally. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop an innovative low-cost technique to inspect kissing bonds. This technique utilizes the shock waves to detect the strength of a bonded joint for a variety of repair materials and substrates in a rapid and reliable fashion. This system will be suitable for field testing of bond strength of varying materials and thickness by offering significant improvements in bond repair inspections through sophisticated image generation and analysis capabilities. Bond inspection is very important for the safety of structures in many military and commercial applications. The ultimate goal of this project would be to develop a low-cost, easy-to-use, and versatile technology and system to improve the reliability and accuracy of field inspection. Should the proposed effort succeed, we will team up with our commercial partners such as Boeing, Goodrich, Honeywell, etc, to promote the use of the proposed technique and developed system.
February: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled entitled “High Temperature Force Sensor System for Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Test.”
IAI receives a new Phase I contract from the Air Force for the proposal named entitled “High Temperature Force Sensor System for Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Test.” Measurements of vehicle/test article component loads and control-surface loads are required during testing to provide vital information for flight vehicle control, design and performance estimation and for structural design loads prediction. Accurate measurements of forces and moments experienced by the test article are critical during wind tunnel tests. Typical wind tunnel conditions are speeds of Mach 8 at total temperature up to 900 ºF. Thermal effects associated with testing in the continuous-flow hypersonic wind tunnel impose challenges for strain-gauge balances or other force/moment measuring devices used for component loads. A non-water-cooled thermal protection and compensation design solution is needed. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop innovative sensor architectures, electronics, and software techniques to provide the force sensor with capabilities of continuous measurements under high temperature without water-cool or thermal protection. We envision that the proposed high temperature force sensor could have a significant impact in many applications such as the control-surface loads in hypersonic wind tunnel tests, process control for turbine engines, and power production facilities, etc. IAI is in a unique situation to promote the introduction of this new technology to a wide variety of military and commercial applications.
February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new BAA contract entitled entitled “ARTeMUS: Agile Robot Teams for Mobile Networking in Urban Settings.”
IAI receives a new BAA contract from the Air Force for the proposal named entitled “ARTeMUS: Agile Robot Teams for Mobile Networking in Urban Settings.” The Intelligent Automation Team consisting of Intelligent Automation, Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, University of Southern California and University of Texas at Austin proposes an innovative approach called ARTeMUS (Agile Robot Teams for Mobile Networking in Urban Settings) to meet the objectives of DARPA's LANdroid Control Software. The primary objectives/goal of ARTeMUS is to provide LANdroids with capabilities for autonomous Self-configuration, Self-optimization, Self-healing, Tethering and Intelligent Power Management. Our solution will provide revolutionary capabilities for the warfighter to maintain communications and reach back in a NLOS/urban environment. It will enable the deployment of a low cost, robust and agile temporary networking infrastructure to support the warfighter.
February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled entitled “Semantic-Based Authorization and Access Framework for the Virtual Enterprise (SAAFVE).”
IAI receives a new Phase II contract from the Air Force for the proposal named entitled “Semantic-Based Authorization and Access Framework for the Virtual Enterprise (SAAFVE).” Different organizations or groups may come together to form a Virtual Enterprise (VE). Members of one organization, when acting in a certain role, may have access to data categories that are owned by another organization. A new organization, such as a Coalition partner, may join a Virtual Enterprise for a specific mission. While network technology in general and Internet and Web technologies such as Web services in particular are allowing Virtual Enterprise components to share data, the Information Assurance techniques that mirror the distributed, net-centric enterprise are not yet deployed. The issue is not simply to deny information access to members of one organization; rather, the challenge is to have the right people obtain the right information at the right time. We propose an innovative solution to this challenge, the Semantics-based Authorization and Access Framework for the Virtual Enterprise (SAAFVE). The SAAFVE agent-based solution offers a scalable, integrated architecture in which access to semantically-described data is mediated by Policy, reasoning engines are deployed within a SAAFVE Gateway to determine a requester’s access to data or resources and audit capability is supported. SAAFVE provides protocols to support interaction with semantically aware data sources, and to connect the multiple Gateways.
February 2008: MDA awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “Seamlessly Integrated GNC Algorithms for Multi-Missile Interception.”
IAI receives a new Phase I contract from the MDA for the proposal named “Seamlessly Integrated GNC Algorithms for Multi-Missile Interception.” We propose an integrated missile interception approach that ensures seamless transition between fly out guidance phase and end game guidance phase under environments with complex noises and multiple weapon/sensor resources. Several distinctive key features are as follows: 1) Rather than attempting achieving fly-out guidance laws that will invariably require information on time-to-go, continuous feed on target motion, linearization or other unrealistic assumptions, our fly-out guidance approach is based on fast on-line solution to a 3-D optimal control problem. The guidance allows optimally determined two-pulse fly-out strategy, easily incorporates any updated target motion data, and affords seamless transition to end-game guidance; 2) A new end game guidance law which considers time-varying parameters, nose-tail bicontrol, estimation delay, and intentional/chaotic spiraling will be developed; 3) Variable Structure Interacting Multiple Model (VSIMM) estimation theory is applied to support our guidance and control algorithm. Such estimation approach is efficient for tracking different “class” target and/or in “dense” environment, i.e. in presence of a number of different threats corrupted by non-Gaussian clutters. The special structure of our VSIMM will greatly reduce computational complexity; 4) We will also refine game theoretic resource management algorithm and other supporting modules which will optimally utilize available weapons and sensor resources.
February 2008: MDA awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “A Hierarchical Battle Management and Planning Aid Framework For Effective Situational Awareness in Stressful, Time Critical and Collaborative Environments.”
IAI receives a new Phase I contract from the MDA for the proposal named “A Hierarchical Battle Management and Planning Aid Framework For Effective Situational Awareness in Stressful, Time Critical and Collaborative Environments.” We present a hierarchical battle management and planning aids framework for effective situational awareness in stressful, time critical, and collaborative environments. The proposal herein gathers novel ideas, prior arts, and our own expertise and practices to provide an effective and practical approach for the aforementioned topic. The proposed framework is featured as unified task representation, reduced ad-hoc decision making upon dynamics and uncertainties, intelligent, scalable, easy and practical for deployment, and significantly reduced cognitive load for human operators, etc. We will (1) employ a service oriented architecture for the management (creation, categorization, editing and fast retrieval) of U.S. interception capabilities (interceptors and other weapon systems) and potential threats, (2) use a highly expressive knowledge representation method, extended hierarchical task networks (EHTNs), to specify suitable assignments between threats and corresponding U.S. capabilities through specifications of hierarchical task structures, (3) design an integrated hierarchical battle management and planning aids framework for effective situational awareness in stressful, time critical, and collaborative environments, and finally (4) explore and extend the framework to provide rationale and explanation to facilitate better understanding, re-plan (redistribute interceptors) and decision making of suitable interception allocation to threats for operators.
February 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “A Psychophysiological and Performance Based Prediction System for Adaptive Aiding.”
IAI receives a new Phase I contract from the Air Force for the proposal named “A Psychophysiological and Performance Based Prediction System for Adaptive Aiding.” As military equipment becomes more sophisticated and complex, missions become significantly more cognitively demanding. In order to achieve the objective of preventing errors and reducing cognitive demands on military personnel, a system is needed that is able to assess and predict operator stress, attention and overload states and provide adaptive aiding to maintain the operator in a state of maximal situation awareness and response readiness. Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop an adaptive aiding system that uses a combination of performance and situational awareness assessments to tune the sensor integration algorithm to detect expected future states of cognitive overload, high levels of stress, and high and low levels of task-focused attention. The system will be based on three wearable devices that contain a total of nine wireless psychophysiological sensors. This project focuses on three key aspects of the system design: 1) comparing the efficiency and utility of Fisher Discriminant Analysis and artificial neural networks for integrating sensor data; 2) comparing two operator modeling systems (dynamic event-triggered pattern analysis and the Dynamic Integration Diagram) for predicting operator functional state based on psychophysiological, performance and environmental data; and 3) designing an adaptive aiding interface for assisting operators prior to cognitive overload.
February 2008: Army awards IAI a new Phase II contract entitled “An Integrated Architecture for Seamless Soft Handoff in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.”
IAI receives a new Phase II contract from the Army for the proposal named “An Integrated Architecture for Seamless Soft Handoff in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” The multiplicity of existent wireless networks and technologies creates the need for techniques that can allow devices to automatically transit between the network landscapes. In Phase I, we have shown that our approach can deliver low packet loss, low latency, and smooth handoff solutions with minimum packet overhead. Further, our approach is resistant to node mobility thanks to the intelligent link management scheme. Our research on IEEE 802.21 shows that MIH (Media Independent Handover) may serve as a component in our integrated architecture, and our research will pioneer Ad-Hoc-MIH specifications. In Phase II, we will develop the proposed approach in a full-fledged manner by researching the unique challenges in routing imposed by multi-radio/multi-channel mobile devices, and investigating appropriate routing policies and metrics. During Phase II, we will also evaluate the interoperability of our framework with 802.21 MIH, and make technical contributions to the standard community. This Phase II will fully develop all the software managers and simulation platforms for performance evaluation purposes, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the solutions using physical experiments comparing the performance against current handoff schemes. In conclusion, our work represents the first complete solution that provides seamless handoff in ad hoc networks with minimum service disruption.
January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “ACES Model Composition and Development Toolkit to Support NGATS Concepts.”
IAI receives a new contract from NASA for the proposal named “ACES Model Composition and Development Toolkit to Support NGATS Concepts.” Building on recent advances in formal agent specification, protocol composition, model composers, and visualization capabilities provided by development environments such as eclipse, the key innovation in this effort is the development of an agent model composition toolkit that will enable NASA ACES users to design and compose agents, activities, and models to meet specific design requirements. From a users perspective the front end of the toolkit will be very similar in spirit to a Simulink® or a Matrix-X® where users can drag and drop from a library of models, interconnect the inputs and outputs of these models, and run a simulation. In addition to composing models, a key feature provided by this toolkit is a family of “physical language specific adaptors” that will allow users to import domain models written in other languages such as Matlab®. Integral to the Phase II effort will enhancements to the ACES-X, TAP architecture to enable plug-n-play of detailed 4-D trajectories in the terminal area, the development of a Command and Control framework for ACES-X and the development of a library of C2 models to enhance the capabilities of the ACES-X TAP.
NASA Application:
Our initial target for the product developed in this effort is the ATM modeling and simulation community within NASA. Over the last few year NASA ACES software has gained increased acceptance and usage by Air Traffic Management (ATM) researchers, concept developers and analysts. It is currently being used by the FAA, JPDO and other organization to develop and evaluate current and future airspace concepts in support of NASAs VAMS and NGATS efforts. The proposed ACES agent model composition toolkit will significantly increase the flexibility and usability of ACES, and reduce the lead time and cost associated with developing new concepts and/or inserting new models into ACES.
Non NASA Applications:
Our target market here is the DOD and commercial modeling and simulation community sector. To address this broader modeling and simulation market IAI will extend and generalize the model composition toolbox for applicability to simulations using CyebelPro® and make it available as a component of CybelePro suite of tools. Other examples of IAI’s commercialization efforts in developing toolboxes for Cybele include the development of a game-theoretic toolbox, a distributed robot control toolbox, and DIVA, a case tool for design and development of Multi-agent Systems.
January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “An Integrated Human System Interaction (HSI) Framework for Human-Agent Team Collaboration.”
IAI receives a new contract from NASA for the proposal named “An Integrated Human System Interaction (HSI) Framework for Human-Agent Team Collaboration.” As space missions become more complex and as mission demands increase, robots, human-robot mixed initiative teams and software autonomy applications are needed to provide increasing levels of support to the mission and to Astronauts. Whatever the task, robot teams will need to interact with Astronauts and possibly Mission Control. There is a need for cooperation and communication among all autonomous entities. Robotic intelligence is required in at least four areas: two-way communication with humans, safety awareness, self-monitoring, and self-maintenance. Robot teams will need to interact with Astronauts concerning the state of their hardware. They may need to interact with humans in order to insure human safety. In Phase 1, we developed an initial HSI Framework (HSIF) to structure protocol-driven interactions (conversations) among Astronauts and multiple-component autonomous systems (soft-bot systems (SBS)). In Phase 2, we extend our HSI framework, with new protocol development that will support interactions among {human-robot team}, {SBS– robot}, {human– robot} and {SBS- human – robot team}. In Phase 2, a protocol library will be developed. Scenarios involving interactions among humans, robot teams and soft-bot systems will be simulated using the protocol library. The protocol library will be integrated with robotic software and implemented on a hardware (robot) platform.
January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “A Simulation Testbed for Dynamic Air Corridors within the Next Generation Air Transportation System.”
IAI receives a new contract from NASA for the proposal named “A Simulation Testbed for Dynamic Air Corridors within the Next Generation Air Transportation System.” The key innovation in this effort is the development of a simulation testbed for identifying dynamic air corridors that can increase aircraft throughput in and around the terminal airspace. In this proposal, an air corridor is a three-dimensional region of space that is intended to safely isolate a stream of aircraft from other aircraft outside the corridor. Air corridors/routes effectively exist today in two forms: static and dynamic. Static air corridors exist in the form of published standard arrival routes (STAR) and standard instrument departures (SID). Dynamic air corridors are effectively created when air traffic control (ATC) issues vector and speed instructions to aircraft. The proposed testbed would identify dynamic air corridors that provide ATC with more options that are optimized to provide greater throughput than is currently available with today’s static air corridors.
January 2008: NASA awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Reconfigurable L-Band Radar Transceiver Using Digital Signal Synthesis.”
IAI receives a new contract from NASA for the proposal named “Reconfigurable L-Band Radar Transceiver Using Digital Signal Synthesis.” IAI proposes to develop a reconfigurable L-band radar transceiver module. The emphasis will be to implement most of critical radar functionalities like:
on a single embedded platform. Such a platform will be a combination of high speed DSP and FPGA on one board. This will considerably reduce the component count and form factor for a radar transceiver design. By simply programming an FPGA with a different “bitstream” file, we can control the radar functionality as pulse modulated or frequency modulated. This work will be synergistic with ongoing efforts at IAI, which involves L-band radar design. Advantages of such a system are:
January 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Secure Routing in Airborne Networks.”
IAI receives a new contract from Army for the proposal named “Secure Routing in Airborne Networks.” The envisioned Airborne Network (AN) is expected to provide seamless connectivity for operators in a large number of applications. All these applications require proper routing security support to establish correct route between communicating platforms in a timely manner. The truth is that not all AN protocols have built-in security, and these protocols are highly vulnerable to various security threats due to the inherent characteristics of ANs. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI), in collaboration with Prof. Jing Deng at the University of New Orleans proposes an integrated Secure Routing scheme for Airborne Networks (SRAN) in order to provide various security characteristics, such as authentication, confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation. The proposed SRAN approach exploits existing technologies and makes them more applicable to the dynamic ANs. First, we formulate a two-level routing security mechanism performed at airborne backbone and edge network layer respectively. In both layers, network dynamics are addressed. Second, a set of security mechanisms previously designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and stable network (Internet) are extended to the domain of ANs, as we believe the AN shares some similarities with each of them. In particular, several mechanisms to reduce computational and communication overhead are specifically designed.
January 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Adaptive Simple Sequencing Instruction Support Toolkit (ASSIST).”
IAI receives a new contract from Army for the proposal named “Adaptive Simple Sequencing Instruction Support Toolkit (ASSIST).” ASSIST (Adaptive Simple Sequencing Instruction Support Toolkit) is envisioned as a tool that will support instructional developers in creating adaptive and interactive SCORM conformant instruction. In Phase I, we developed an approach which focused on the concept of instructional activities: we began to develop an interface by which instructional developers could construct, revise, and reuse instructional activities that combine of instructional constructs (which reflect pedagogical approaches) and content, enabling modularity of instruction. The ASSIST architecture separates the interface that specifies instruction from the construction of executable instruction, enabling the interface for instruction to be applied to different and emerging standards. In Phase II we will continue to develop the ASSIST tool. We will develop the interface so instructional developers can easily create courses with adaptive and interactive instructional activities. We will develop a middle layer that abstracts the instructional specification of the course into a general form. We will develop a sequencing engine that converts the general instructional specification into a SCORM simple sequencing conformant XML. To support instructional developers, we will develop a library of instructional constructs that reflect desirable pedagogy. Finally, ASSIST II will be evaluated for usefulness by instructional developers.
January 2008: Air Force awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Nonlinear Elastic Waves Spectroscopy (NEWS) for non-destructive inspection and detection of the subsurface cracks and flaws.”
IAI receives a new contract from Air Force for the proposal named “Nonlinear Elastic Waves Spectroscopy (NEWS) for non-destructive inspection and detection of the subsurface cracks and flaws.” The objective of the proposed research is to develop a new technology, based on the principles of nonlinear acoustics that will provide an accurate detection of subsurface crack and flaws in materials used in aircraft. Existing theoretical and experimental data demonstrate that the detection of microcracks and other defects that accumulate in material due to fatigue and external damage is enhanced by orders of magnitude with the use of nonlinear acoustic techniques. In the proposed work we will apply two novel techniques of nonlinear acoustic nondestructive evaluation (NA NDE) for evaluation of the material damage. The first technique exploits modulation of ultrasound by low-frequency vibrations and the second is called nonlinear time reversal acoustic (NTRA). Both techniques have a great potential for microcracks detection and localization, even if taken separately. We, however, propose to develop a combined NEWS technique, which will take the advantages of both methods.
The Phase I research effort will demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed nonlinear acoustics techniques and supporting models. We will also produce first generation instrumentation and data processing techniques that will become the foundation of a cost effective and “field-friendly” product for the nondestructive inspection (NDI) of aircraft materials.
January 2008: DHS awards IAI a new contract for the project called “"Eye-Safe" Laser-Induced-Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) for Standoff Explosive Detection.”
IAI receives a new contract from DHS for the proposal named “"Eye-Safe" Laser-Induced-Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) for Standoff Explosive Detection.” The rapid and selective detection of explosives is extremely important in a number of situations, including improvised explosive devices (IED's), landmines, airport security, and related threats. A large number of detection techniques, both bulk methods and molecule-based approaches, have been applied to the sensing of explosives. The detection and identification of trace amounts of explosive materials at a standoff distance presents significant challenges. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has emerged as a powerful technique for the detection of materials on surfaces. However, most current LIBS studies employ Nd:YAG fundamental 1.064 mm laser radiation. The eye-damage threshold at this wavelength is very low. It is desirable to employ a laser at a safer wavelength for explosive detection. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop “eye-safe” LIBS for standoff explosive detection.
We envision that the proposed “eye-safe” LIBS system could have a significant impact in many applications such as the remote sensing of the improvison explosive device (IED) in the battle field, biological and chemical agent dection in countering terrorism, and hazardous material identification in environment protection. IAI is well positioned to introduce this new technology into a wide variety of military and commercial applications.
January 2008: DHS awards IAI a new contract for the project called “A Novel Peak Detection and Data Fusion Methodology for Multidimensional Chemical Analysis.”
IAI receives a new contract from DHS for the proposal named “A Novel Peak Detection and Data Fusion Methodology for Multidimensional Chemical Analysis.” Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes a novel peak detection and data fusion methodology for multidimensional chemical analysis. The proposed peak detection technique is based on Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). Its distinction from other peak detection methods is that it does not require any baseline removal or smoothing algorithms and is robust to noise. It can differentiate the signal from the spike and colored noise and the signal-to-noise ratio can be greatly enhanced. This results in significant reduction in false alarm rates. Since the number of the detected peaks in a multidimensional space may be excessively large, efficient data reduction techniques are needed so that efficient data classification techniques can be applied to a low dimensional data. Our proposed feature extraction method takes advantage of the theoretically well-founded and established data dimensionality reduction techniques. Development of efficient data classification and data fusion are two other important components in the proposed effort. We propose to develop a Maximal Entropy (ME)-based data classification approach. Different from the existing the classifiers the proposed ME-based classification approach can automatically identify unknown chemical agents of which their signatures do not exist in the database. The classification results from different multidimensional chemical analysis techniques will then be fused by an ME-based fusion algorithm. The fusion output will be a set of probabilities of the suspected material belonging to certain kinds of known chemical agents or hazardous materials.
January 2008: DHS awards IAI a new contract for the project called “Securing Network Access in Wireless Sensor Networks Supporting Industrial Control System.”
IAI receives a new contract from DHS for the proposal named “Securing Network Access in Wireless Sensor Networks Supporting Industrial Control System.” Industrial control systems (ICSs) are crucial to the operation of the U.S. critical infrastructures, which are often highly interconnected and mutually dependent systems. With recent technological advances in wireless mesh networking technology, seamlessly integrating wireless sensors into existing plant infrastructures can enable wide monitoring and control applications, such as oil and gas, cold chain, and machine health monitoring. The flexibility and adaptability of wireless lowers the physical and cost limitations posed by wired systems. However, as ICSs are adopting IT solutions to promote corporate connectivity and remote access capabilities, and are being designed and implemented using low-cost sensor nodes, the possibility of cyber security vulnerabilities and incidents increases dramatically. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) and Dr. Peng Ning from North Carolina State University propose a secure network access control system that ensures authorization of communications and automatic key management among micro-electronic-mechanical sensors that are deployed in industrial control systems.
January 2008: Army awards IAI a new contract for the project called “High Performance Parallel Signal Processor with SDK for Advanced Communications.”
IAI receives a new contract from Army for the proposal named ““High Performance Parallel Signal Processor with SDK for Advanced Communications.” Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI), proposes a massive large scale parallelized high performance signal processor for advanced wireless communication. Our novel software developer kit (SDK) will translate single threaded or single processor waveform to the parallel processing aware waveform for field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The high performance parallel processing model in FPGA has: (1) highly computational, embedded real time large scale parallelization, (2) optimization algorithm that allocates processor resources efficiently, (3) SDK tools for waveforms translations from single processor or thread to parallel architecture, (4) SDK tools for processor reconfiguration, expansion, optimization and mapping, (5) parallelization algorithm scalable across multiple processors with decreased power and (6) parallel execution of processing of multiple waveforms in the FPGA.
FPGA offers most resilient, powerful, scalable approach for high performance parallel processing. The key innovations we propose are (1) high speed waveform digital signal processor with simultaneous processing of multiple waveforms in the processor (2) ability to perform test simulations on the FPGA itself, by creating HDL block, (3) ability to process waveforms upto 10 GHz and (4) SDK monitoring, analysis, storing the data and control the channels. The proposed system can be rapidly deployed for testing within the Phase I base period.
January 2008: Army awards IAI a new Phase I contract entitled “COSMOS: Composable, Systematic Cross Layer Design based on Multi-layer Optimization Strategies.”
IAI receives a new Phase I contract from the Army for the proposal named “COSMOS: Composable, Systematic Cross Layer Design based on Multi-layer Optimization Strategies.” We propose the Composable, Systematic cross-layer design and analysis approach based on Multi-layer Optimization Strategies (COSMOS). First, “Layering as Optimization Decomposition” serves as a base for a unified framework which provides a level ground for comparison among various cross-layer designs, as well as a unified view on “how to and how not to layer”. This mathematical theory provides guidelines that enable systematic design of network architectures. Second, in order to make feasible the development of useful software tools, we aim to enumerate alternative cross-layer architectures. Third, to make the theoretical guidelines useful in practice, theory needs to be translated into manageable cross-layer strategies. We propose the composable framework that enables flexible network evaluation and optimization. Composability is enabled by our unique technologies on applying ontology-based agent composition for multi-agent system models. The organization of the alternative cross-layer architectures can be naturally translated to an ontology knowledge base, embedded with rules and inference logic to guide cross-layer design. Finally, to analyze how cross-layer design may work with various security architectures, we impose architecture constraints in the mathematical formulation and “block” some cross-layer interactions. As a result, the designs out of such “reduced” design space will abide by the governing security architecture.
