Rome Laboratory/PKPX, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome NY 13441-4514

A -- SPECIAL NOTICE: ROME LABORATORY'S FY 97 SBIR TOPICS SOL SBIR TOPIC 1 POC Joetta A. Bernhard, Contracting Officer, A/C 315-330-2308; Margot Ashcroft, SBIR Program Manager, 315-330-1793. PART 1 OF 6. ROME LABORATORY'S FY 97 SBIR TOPIC. ROME LABORATORY IS PLEASED TO MAKE AVAILABLE THE FOLLOWING SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATIVE RESEARCH (SBIR) PROGRAM TOPICS, AS FOLLOWS: SBIR TOPIC (1) TITLE: Innovative C4I Technologies. TECHNICAL POINT OF CONTACT: Margot R. Ashcroft, RL/XPD (315) 330-3021. OBJECTIVE: Develop innovative technologies for enhancing the performance, availability, and affordability of C4I systems and subsystems. DESCRIPTION: Proposals may address any aspect of C4I pervasive technologies not specifically covered by other SBIR topics. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, innovative concepts and technologies in: communications, including networks and network management, radio and wireless communications, radar signal, image and speech processing, computer science, including software engineering, computer systems technology and artificial intelligence, electromagnetic (EM) technology, including phased array antennas, null steering and scattering, EM materials and components, EM modeling of ultralow sidelobe antennas mounted on aircraft and EM effects modeling of advanced circuits and packaged modules, reliability and diagnostic technology, virtual reality and other information presentation technologies, and information warfare technologies emphasizing information protection. This topic offers great flexibility for proposers to offer innovative technology with revolutionary impact on C4I systems and subsystems. Proposal titles must reflect the specific technology problem being addressed. - PHASE I: Provide a report describing the proposed concept in detail and show its viability and feasibility. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL MARKET: Many C4I technologies have substantial dual-use potential and will impact competitiveness and performance of the commercial sector as well as the military sector. All solutions proposed must have potential for use/application in the commercial as well as military sector, and potential commercial applications must be discussed in the proposal. SBIR TOPIC (2) TITLE: Large-Scale Knowledge-Base Technology. TECHNICAL POINT OF CONTACT: Craig S. Anken, RL/C3, (315) 330-4833 OBJECTIVE: Develop tools and techniques to provide seamless access, storage, and retrieval of knowledge within massive knowledge base systems and to transform this knowledge/data into information which can be exploited through collaborative analysis and planning. DESCRIPTION: Large-Scale knowledge-base (KB) technology will provide the foundation for intelligent systems that can quickly search massive KBs for relevant information, help users to evaluate the effects of complex courses of action, and work with users to develop, share, and effectively use knowledge about complex systems and processes. Distributed KBs will be the backdrop of all Intelligent systems. Widely shared KBs, coupled to reasoning programs, will help transform data into information, supplying necessary but missing detail to a number of Air Force and Commercial domain applications. Mechanisms to be investigated include but are not limited to, KB libraries and associated construct/edit tools, KB acquisition/discovery tools, and high performance KB computing techniques. Advanced tools and techniques in these areas will allow system developers to build large-scale knowledge bases (millions of objects) quickly and economically and efficiently deal with excessive demands for querying mixed media resources. Proposals may also draw on current visions involving the Internet and the way autonomous intelligent information specialists might populate cyberspace in the future. To do so, will involve looking at the future directions of KB systems, with focus on large-scale knowledge-bases and applications.- Phase I: Identify, investigate and prototype advanced knowledge-base capabilities and identify potential Air Force and commercial users of these products. This technology could have a major impact on applications that require integrated decision making and timely and accurate information such as nuclear power plant control, autonomous vehicles, aircraft operation, hospital life support systems, decision support systems and military command and control. SBIR TOPIC (3) TITLE: Automatic Code Generation for Real-Time Parallel Systems. TECHNICAL POINT OF CONTACT: Milissa M. Benincasa, RL/C3 (315) 330-7651. OBJECTIVE: Develop techniques or prototypes for migrating legacy real-time sequential code onto high performance computing platforms. DESCRIPTION: In order for embedded real-time legacy software systems to realize the increased processing power available on high performance computing architectures, software support is required to help minimize the cost/effort involved in migrating these systems. Automatic parallel code generation is one area of research that could make a significant impact in the process of migrating legacy real-time systems. Automatic parallel code generation would significantly reduce the level of effort involved in rewriting sequential software so that it will run on these new hardware platforms. Automatic parallel code generation can be looked at from several different aspects. One approach is to provide techniques that allow sequential code (Jovial, C, Fortran, Ada) to be synthesized, identify the inherent parallelism, and then automatically produce the parallel code for the selected high performance architecture. Another approach would be to graphically represent the inherent parallelism that exists in the sequential code, allowing the developer to manipulate the graph, and then from the graph generate parallel code. The goal of this topic is to define a practical technique for automatically generating parallel code for real-time systems. This technique will then be demonstrated on a real-time C4I application.- PHASE I: This phase will develop the requirements for a prototype system as well as a working demonstration of the system for automatically generating parallel real-time code. Areas of potential commercial use exist in modeling and simulation, database transaction processing, and medical imaging systems. SBIR TOPIC (4) TITLE: Multi-Source Collaborative Distributed Information Systems - TECHNICAL POINT OF CONTACT: Mark D. Foresti, RL/C3 (315) 330-2233. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this effort is to develop a multi-source collaborative environment in which geographically dispersed users can jointly edit, create, view, manipulate multi- source data retrieved from other system environments and database management systems, as well as, providing the distributed capability of sharing information, group decision making, communication and video conferencing in real time. DESCRIPTION: C4I application environments which support collaborative computing requirements on a large scale have never sufficiently been investigated. Most existing collaborative systems emphasize a point-to-point communication capability for information sharing. A collaborative environment supporting such applications demand real-time information exchange and synchronized group decision making. Therefore, new techniques are needed to ensure synchronization of objects/applications in a distributed environment, exploitation of shared memory and buffer management mechanisms for information management and new concepts associated with message passing and remote procedure calls. Intelligent real-time mechanisms or agents are required for providing integration of multi-source pieces of information from heterogeneous collaborative distributed data information systems. These advanced agents will provide services for encapsulation of processes for correlating multi-source data residing on distributed repositories for sharing among users in a collaborative distributed environment. This environment would provide an advanced collaboration domain between users with the support of a powerful distributed data information system which can provide a wide variety of services. Such an environment can be used to support the C4I for the Warrior, the Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstrations (JWID), and DARPAs Joint Task Force (JTF).- Phase I will focus on the design and development of the techniques to support a collaborative information environment mentioned above. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL MARKET: This technology will have a major impact on applications that require information to be pulled together from different data information systems for collaborative group decision making. Typical applications include joint planning systems, aircraft operations, surgical diagnosis for physicians, logistics, disaster relief, and educational services. SBIR TOPIC (5) TITLE: Futuristic Collaborative C4I Technologies for Information Visualization and Knowledge Based Design. TECHNICAL POINTS OF CONTACT: Joseph P. Cavano, RL/C3CB, 315-330-4033, Robert M. Flo, RL/C3AB, 315-330-2805, Peter A. Jedrysik, RL/C3AB, 315-330-2158, Paul O'Neil, RL/IRDS, 315-330-3222. OBJECTIVE: To maximize speed and quality of planning, wargaming and battlefield management via improved data visualization, navigation and manipulation for collaborative knowledge based systems. DESCRIPTION: To be responsive to 21st century demands of the information warrior, the Air Force must be more responsive to short time scales for decision making and delivery of increasing amounts of information. For example, planning for air battle command operations must be done quickly, in order to increase the tempo of operations. People and databases involved in tri-service battlefield interactions such as Planning and Control may be geographically distributed. The ultimate goal is to give the battlefield commander and support staff access to all information needed to win the campaign - when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it. Systems are needed to augment human intellect and understanding and support collaborative decision making through ''virtual meeting facilities.'' Methods for data visualization are also needed so that users can navigate through and discover information on the way. Improvements to current data visualization and manipulation technologies must provide a paradigm shift away from stand-alone documents and isolated information systems to a heterogeneous collection of malleable interdependent documentation and supporting data accessible through internets and intranets via linking. This effort will integrate knowledge, tools and management processes by designing the collaborative communication-oriented aspects of Air Force applications (e.g., distributed planning environment, wargaming and battlefield management scenarios) with visual methods to integrate various kinds of data (e.g., journals, email, plans and time lines) and tools needed to make their decisions as a team.- PHASE I: To be responsive to this SBIR topic, any one of the following three Phase I objectives may be met: 1. Investigate hypermedia capability infrastructure (such as integrated applications, explicitly structured documents, addressable objects, view control, shared screens, and hyperdocument libraries) needed to support collaborative knowledge based systems for planning, identifying commercial information technologies that provide such functionality, and proposing a strategic design for developing the key elements of such a system. 2. Identify current limitations and proposed innovative techniques which offer significant improvements over current data visualization and manipulation technologies. 3. Develop a prototype tool for textual information. This tool should allow a user to navigate (browse) the information space graphically, without resorting to typed queries. In Phase I, the amount of data may be limited to several domains in order to show the feasibility of the technology being pursued. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL MARKET: Although military systems might have shorter time scales and require more integrity due to the potential loss of human life in Air Force missions, all commercial organizations have similar needs for better organizational performance. Despite the enormous investments in information technology, white-collar productivity has risen slowly. One reason for this disappointing result is that today's computer systems fail to truly augment knowledge workers in their tasks. The technology from this SBIR will help improve end-to-end management processes in a wide range of management information situations in business such as digital libraries and financial domains, the medical community, and education. (0229)

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