Environmental Remediation ScienceProgram

Document Type:	Modification to Previous  Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number:	DE-PS02-09ER09-07
Opportunity Category:	Continuation
Posted Date:	Dec 24, 2008
Creation Date:	Mar 05, 2009
Original Closing Date for Applications:	Apr 09, 2009
Current Closing Date for Applications:	Apr 09, 2009
Archive Date:	Apr 24, 2010
Funding Instrument Type:	Grant
Category of Funding Activity:	Science and Technology and other Research and Development
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards:
Estimated Total Program Funding:
Award Ceiling:
Award Floor:
CFDA Number(s):	81.049  –  Office of Science Financial Assistance Program
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement:	No

Eligible Applicants

Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled “Additional Information on Eligibility”

Additional Information on Eligibility:

Applicants from Colleges and Universities, non-profit organizations, for-profit commercial organizations, state and local governments, and unaffiliated individuals. Researchers from Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) or DOE National Laboratories are not eligible to respond to this notice.

Agency Name

Chicago Service Center- Factory Five

Description

The Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby announces interest in receiving applications for research grants in the Environmental Remediation Sciences Program (ERSP), which is within the Climate and Environmental Sciences Division (CESD) in the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER). The ERSP seeks to advance fundamental science to understand, predict and mitigate the impacts of environmental contamination from past nuclear weapons production and provide a scientific basis for the long term stewardship of nuclear waste disposal. The program supports an integrated portfolio of research ranging from molecular to field scales with emphasis on the use of advanced computer models and multidisciplinary, iterative experimentation to understand and predict contaminant transport in complex subsurface environments. This mission is guided by the BER long term performance measure to provide sufficient scientific understanding such that DOE sites would be able to incorporate coupled physical, chemical and biological processes into decision making for environmental remediation and long-term stewardship. To meet this measure, BER funds basic research to investigate the key processes affecting the mobility of subsurface contaminants found at DOE sites. The goal of this solicitation is to support innovative, fundamental research to investigate the coupled physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting the transport of subsurface contaminants commonly found at DOE sites. Applications should identify critical knowledge gaps and address hypothesis-driven research to better understand the significant physical, chemical, and biological processes influencing the form and mobility of specific inorganic contaminants in the subsurface. Research projects should aim to provide the scientific basis for the long term stewardship of contaminated sites across the DOE complex and the development of new remediation concepts and strategies. Applications must include an explanation of how the proposed research supports the BER long term performance measure. The environment of interest is the terrestrial subsurface including the vadose zone, the saturated zone and key groundwater-surface water interfaces. The proposed research is expected to contribute to the public good by advancing the fundamental science associated with the cycling and transport of inorganic elements in the subsurface, and that benefit will be expressed through contributions to the technical literature. Listed below are the specific radionuclide and heavy metal Contaminants of Concern for this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) and an outline of the general science needs of the ERSP. Phytoremediation and the study of organic contaminants are NOT addressed in this FOA.

Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA)

The synopsis for this grant opportunity is detailed below, following this paragraph. This synopsis contains all of the updates to this document that have been posted as of 02/02/2009 . If updates have been made to the opportunity synopsis, update information is provided below the synopsis.If you would like to receive notifications of changes to the grant opportunity click send me change notification emails . The only thing you need to provide for this service is your email address. No other information is requested.

Any inconsistency between the original printed document and the disk or electronic document shall be resolved by giving precedence to the printed document.

Document Type:	Modification to Previous  Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number:	W911NF-08-R-0012
Opportunity Category:	Other
Posted Date:	Feb 02, 2009
Creation Date:	Mar 03, 2009
Original Closing Date for Applications:	Mar 12, 2009
Current Closing Date for Applications:	Mar 12, 2009
Archive Date:	Feb 02, 2011
Funding Instrument Type:	Cooperative Agreement Procurement Contract
Category of Funding Activity:	Science and Technology and other Research and Development
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards:	1
Estimated Total Program Funding:	$209,700,000
Award Ceiling:	$209,700,000
Award Floor:	$0
CFDA Number(s):	12.630  –  Basic, Applied, and Advanced Research in Science and Engineering
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement:	No

Eligible Applicants

Others (see text field entitled “Additional Information on Eligibility” for clarification)

Additional Information on Eligibility:

See Program Announcement

Agency Name

Dept of the Army — Materiel Command- Muzak

Description

The U.S. Army RDECOM Acquisition Center, RTP Contracting Division, on behalf of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, is issuing the FINAL Program Announcement (PA), W911NF-08-R-0012, for the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA). The purpose of this United States Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA) Program Announcement (PA) is to solicit offers that will help fulfill the research and development goals of the U.S. Department of the Army. The objective of the Alliance is to conduct research creating the technical foundation supporting development of future autonomous unmanned systems. To achieve this objective the Alliance will advance fundamental science and technology in several key areas including the ability of unmanned systems to sense and fully understand the local environment in terms of both features and activities; the ability to interact intelligently with the surroundings to successfully conduct meaningful activity; individually or as part of a team, to readily adapt to changing situations and to learn from prior experience; the ability to be integrated safely and successfully into human activity; the ability to dexterously manipulate objects in a human-like fashion and to maneuver unfettered in cluttered, complex environments. The Army envisions the Alliance will bring together government, industrial, and academic institutions to address research and development required to enable the deployment of future military unmanned ground vehicle systems ranging in size from man-portables to ground combat vehicles. The FINAL ROBOTICS CTA PA has been posted at the Robotics CTA website: www.arl.army.mil/robotics. This PA will result in the award of two instruments: (1) a cooperative agreement as defined at 31 U.S.C. 6305 for the execution of the Fundamental Research Component; and (2) a procurement contract as defined in 31 U.S.C. 6303 for the execution of the Technology Transition Component that will be awarded to the Integration Lead Organization of the selected Consortium. The cooperative agreement for the Fundamental Research Component will be awarded to a Consortium of academic and industrial organizations. To assure the creation of a well focused research program, the consortium will be kept small, ideally with approximately six members. The consortium will be led by an organization that will be charged with spearheading the technology integration and technology transition efforts. This organization will be designated as the Integration Lead Organization (ILO) and its CTA activities shall be conducted in the United States. There will be no limitation to the place of performance for other organizations participating in the Consortium. However Consortium activities, conducted under the Technology Transition Component of the Alliance and directly related to military applications may come under the jurisdiction of the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) and appropriate controls must be in place when foreign entities are part of the Consortium. Additionally, the Consortium must include an HBCU/MI member(s) that will participate substantially in the research effort and receive at least 10% of the funding for the Fundamental Research Component. The Consortium will function as a collective of equal partners deciding upon all Consortium matters equally. Since unmanned systems draw upon a broad palette of technologies, it is expected that the Consortium will be enhanced by a constantly changing group of additional researchers and research organizations chosen jointly by the Consortium and the Government to complement research already undertaken by the Consortium and Government. These researchers and research topics, while part of the annual program plan, will be subawardees to one of the Consortium partners and not part of the Consortium proper. The procurement contract will be awarded to the ILO for the Consortium. The ILO is expected to subcontract with other entities (both members of the Consortium and other organizations as appropriate) to achieve the technology transition efforts. Individual tasks will be issued under the procurement contract as transition opportunities are identified from the research results under the cooperative agreement. The proposal will form the basis for the Initial Program Plan and will set the stage for subsequent annual program plans. Therefore the technical proposal should be detailed, identifying proposed research activities to the task level, specific research goals and timelines for each proposed research task, and the proposed set of personnel that will conduct these activities together with their qualifications. It should identify proposed mechanisms for intra-consortium and intra-alliance collaboration. It should specify proposed educational opportunities for Government researchers and mechanisms for further developing the research and educational programs of the HBCU/MI members. Plan funding levels are set forth in the FINAL Robotics CTA PA. Contingent upon available funding, the Army expects to support the Robotics consortium for five years with an option for an additional five years.

Link to Full Announcement

ROBOTICS COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE

If you have difficulty accessing the full announcement electronically, please contact:

Ernest Dixon
Procurement Analyst
Phone 919-549-4270 ernie.dixon

The DoD uses digital cameras on unmanned vehicles and at remote stations for long-standoff surveillance and reconnaissance applications. The images acquired by these cameras are subject to apparent motion of the field of view due to vibration of the camera as well as motion and distortion due to atmospheric effects. For many applications, stabilization of the image is highly desirable prior to transmission from the camera to an observer.

Image stabilization can be achieved to varying degrees by a multitude of methodologies, some of which have found success within the commercial still and video camera industry. Mechanical image stabilization actuates the imager in order to suppress jitter present on the observers platform from inducing blurring or perceived motion within the image. Digital image stabilization techniques shift the image data spatially within the output array to compensate for apparent motion of the field of view. These digital methods typically employ scene based approaches to deduce own motion and have demonstrated sub-pixel levels of jitter-rejection given a scene with stationary segments that can be tracked and registered. These scene conditions cannot always be guaranteed under poor visibility or low-light scenarios or when the scene is dominated by moving objects. As a result, scene-based stabilization approaches are explicitly excluded in this topic. Instead, the preferred solution equips the camera itself with instrumentation to sense its own motion and stabilize (either digitally or mechanically) the image before transmission to the observer.

Both Feeback Inertial Image Stabilzation and Feedback Inertial Image Stabilization are established approaches to inertial camera stabilization. However, this DoD wants innovative solutions that push beyond existing performance limits and achieve new levels of stabilization performance required by long-standoff observation systems. Long standoff distances (multiple kilometer paths) and narrow fields of view will entail sub milliradian (10s of microradian) levels of stabilization. This is in the presence of 10 – 100 milliradian levels of local vibrational motion of the camera over frequencies from 1 to 100 Hz. The levels of motion and desired stabilization motivate new approaches to inertial sensing and corresponding advances in embedded processing to digitally correct for measured motion.

At the same time, new levels of smart camera integration are required to seamlessly incorporate the desired image stabilization into fast-framing low-light applications. The camera must be smart to enable easy integration into existing video surveillance applications. All processing must be local within the camera device, without imposing external computational or infrastructure requirements. Typical applications could involve mounting the camera on an unmanned ground vehicle or on a surveillance tower. The camera must be capable of providing better than VGA levels of resolution at greater than 60 frames per second. The ability to provide color images in low-light (sub milli-LUX) is critical to a variety of surveillance missions for discrimination of objects under difficult observational conditions. It would be highly desirable to integrate the image stabilization into an embedded processing capability that is scalable and reconfigurable in order to accommodate additional image processing algorithms for object discrimination and image compression. However, the development and implementation of these algorithms is not the intended focus of this topic.

Here are some references to get you started:

1. R. A. Gross, “Analysis of Internal-Inertial Image Stabilization,” Appl. Opt. 10, 1422-1431, 1971.

2. Peter Corke, Jorge Lobo, and Jorge Dias, An introduction to inertial and visual sensing, The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) Special Issue from the 2nd Workshop on Integration of Vision and Inertial Sensors., 26(6):519 V535, June 2007.

3. Morimoto, C. and Chellappa, R., Evaluation of image stabilization algorithms, Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 1998. Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Volume 5, 12-15 May 1998.

4. Tico, M. and Vehvilainen, M,, Robust method of digital image stabilization, Communications, Control and Signal Processing, 2008. ISCCSP 2008. 3rd International Symposium, 12-14 March 2008

5. Scott W. Teare; Sergio R. Restaino, Introduction to Image Stabilization, SPIE Tutorial Texts in Optical Engineering Vol. TT73

6. PTU-DISM – Inertial Stabilization Module – www.dperception.com/products_family_advanced-features-ism.html