SPECTRUM PHOTONICS INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A19-116
SPECTRUM PHOTONICS INC — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
Phase I SBIR feasibility signal
- Phase I awards fund proof-of-concept work. For capture teams, they mark early interest from Department of Defense in a technical approach.
- Watch for Phase II follow-ons from the same firm/topic family — that conversion path is where budgets and transition pressure rise.
- Obligated amount $111,500. Cross-check similar awards in the same agency and technology tags for going-rate context.
- Topic code A19-116 links this award to a solicitation family — search the same topic stem for incumbents and recompete timing.
- Amount
- $111,500
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- A19-116
- Solicitation
- 19.2
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- HI
- Period
- 2019-10-28 → 2020-07-21
Description
Currently, DoD spend many tens of millions of dollars per year developing and testing thermal sensor systems designed for 24/7 day/night surveillance capabilities for a wide variety of tactical scenarios, e.g., detection of buried landmines and IEDs, identification of camouflaged/hidden targets, and night-time facial recognition. The advances in AI&ML are driven by new algorithms, notably deep neural networks (DNN), and the maturation of graphical processing unit (GPU) technology optimized for intensive matrix computations. The latest AI&ML algorithms can be trained relatively quickly on low cost GPUs to perform inference on GPUs in real-time. In particular, deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) have demonstrated their potential for accurate object detection and classification. In order to exploit these advances in polarimetric imaging and AI&ML, the team proposes development of an integrated multimodal thermal imaging and data exploitation system designed to provide “real-time” scene understanding and situational awareness. Such a system would greatly reduce the time and cost required to bring soldier specific image based solutions to the battlefield.