TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION BRIEFING POC Laura Schoppe, (919)541-7437. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center seeks to transfer into commercial application a portfolio of patented technologies that will enable a company to provide improved absolute optical encoders to a variety of markets. NASA seeks a company interested in developing these technologies for commercial applications through a cooperative partnership development project. A prototype system has been built and tested to demonstrate system performance. NASA holds four patents for these technologies, thus the technologies are also available for licensing by the commercial partner. A Technology Commercialization Briefing will be held at Goddard on June 18, 1996, to provide interested companies with detailed information on the technologies and the process that will be followed to establish partnership agreements and/or licenses for commercialization. ENCODER TECHNOLOGIES--NASA Goddard has developed several encoder technologies that provide performance improvements at comparable production costs to commercially available rotary and linear encoders. The NASA absolute encoders provide improved accuracy and resolution over current incremental encoders, while still providing the advantages and reliability of absolute encoders. The ultra-high resolution, absolute optical rotary encoder measures angular rotations as small as 0.003 arcseconds - an order of magnitude improvement over current technology at a comparable cost. The ultra-sensitive absolute linear encoder has a resolution of 0.01 microns, with an almost unlimited range of travel. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL USES - testing/laboratory equipment; surface mount assembly equipment; positioning tables; micropositioners; semiconductor manufacturing; inspection equipment; calibration; nuclear medicine equipment; QC/inspection systems; aerospace/communications equipment. BENEFITS - high resolution; absolute capabilities; continuous coverage for almost unlimited range; reliable solid-state design; redundancy attained through additional read channels; capable of providing vibration; jitter information; can be ruggedized for operation in extreme environments; comparable production cost to commercially available incremental encoders with higher resolution and accuracy. OPTIONS FOR COMMERCIALIZATION - This technology is part of the NASA Technology Transfer/Commercialization Program. The Program seeks to stimulate development of commercial applications from NASA-developed technology. The program goal is to advance the state of the art by developing improved performance optical rotary and linear encoders. The subject of the June 18, 1996, briefing will be the partnership and licensing options available for the encoder technologies. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - US Patent No. 5,058,281, ``Control System for Ruling Blazed, Aberration Corrected Diffraction Gratings''; 5,266,796, ``Rotary Encoding Device Using Polygonal Mirror with Diffraction Gratings on each Facet''; 5,329,121, ``Rotary Encoding Device with Polygonal Reflector and Centroid Detection''; 5,483,058, ``Method and Means for Ultra-High Sensitivity, Absolute Optical Encoding''. TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION BRIEFING - The Goddard Technology Commercialization Briefing implements NASA's management philosophy for enhancing utilization of government-developed technology by the private sector. It does so by integrating the combined interests and talents of Goddard management, technical staff, Office of Patent Counsel, and the Office of Commercialization Programs to match potential developers/manufacturers with identified NASA technologies available for licensing and commercialization. Technology Commercialization Briefings are held when a Goddard-developed technology is found to be of broad interest to industry and when multiple partnership and license requests are received for the same intellectual property. HOW THE BRIEFING WORKS - NASA identifies companies with experience and competence in related technologies; related manufacturing capabilities; track record in commercializing similar products; marketing organization; and stable financial condition. After attending a technical briefing, those companies interested in joining with NASA in a Commercial Agreement and the accompanying Patent License Agreement will be invited to submit detailed business plans for commercializing the proposed technology. Thus Goddard's Technology Commercialization Briefing leads to a working partnership between industry and NASA to transfer advanced and commercially valuable technology to the private sector for commercial product applications. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW - NASA intends to commercialize this technology by patent license and/or Commercial Agreement. Following the briefing, companies will be invited to submit a commercialization business plan for joint development and patent license agreements to Mr. Dennis Marchant, Patent Counsel, GSFC, Mail Code 204, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771. Commercialization business plans will be reviewed by an in-house evaluation team of civil service NASA employees composed of representatives from the following: Office of Commercial Programs, Office of Patent Counsel, and the encoder technology researcher. The evaluation team may consult with outside advisors as required. Following selection, the Federal Register notice of intent to grant patent license will be published. WHAT YOU NEED TO DO - Companies interested in attending the Technology Commercialization Briefing on June 18, 1996, to learn more about the Encoder Technologies should contact: NASA Technology Applications Team, Research Triangle Institute, Laura A. Schoppe, P.O. Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194, (919)541-7437, FAX (919)541-6221, email schoppe@rti.org, by June 11, 1996. The briefing will be held at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, from 8:00am to 12:00 noon on June 18, 1996. Afternoon appointments will be available from private discussions. Electronic versions of the documents will be provided on the World Wide Web at http://genesis.gsfc.nasa.gov/procure.htm, and by anonymous ftp to genesis.gsfc.nasa.gov/public/solicita.

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