February 2024 - Physical Sciences Inc.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded an Army Phase I STTR to develop a laser power conversion (LPC) system to enable extended endurance and range of the DoD’s cleared (“blue”) Group 1 small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS). The LPC system will consist of a photovoltaic-based receiver payload integrated with the sUAS power electronics. The payload will capture a laser beam projected from a ground station that autonomously tracks and steers the beam to the payload. Along with their research partner, PSI will transfer, fabricate, and adapt their cutting edge multi-junction photovoltaic research to the sUAS application. These photovoltaic devices will be characterized for efficiency, and thermal and electrical management requirements via modeling and benchtop experiments. PSI will design, develop, and test a benchtop beam launch apparatus that collimates/focuses a laser to a beam profile and spot size compatible with the sUAS-mounted receiver array at distance greater than 500m from source to target. A complete beam steering and tracking system will be defined. Phase I will demonstrate key feasibility criteria and define overall system requirements via directed modeling and empirical testing initiatives. The data will guide the Phase II complete system design, yielding a full concept of operations demonstration.

For more information contact:

Dr. Shin-Juh Chen
Group Leader, Industrial & Environmental Sensors Group
schen@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the U.S. Army. This support does not constitute an expressed or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences, Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Army for the development of algorithms to automate geometric measurements of reconnaissance objectives, improving speed and safety while maintaining compatibility with existing toolkits.

PSI proposes to develop the Photogrammetric Reconstruction of Reconnaissance Objectives (PRRO) algorithm suite, which leverages novel computer vision and 3-dimensional analysis techniques to automate route reconnaissance functions. In particular, PRRO will exploit the currently underutilized full-motion video (FMV) data collected by the Instrument Set, Reconnaissance and Surveying (ENFIRE) system to automate geometric measurements of reconnaissance objectives. The developed algorithms will be fully compatible with the ENFIRE system currently in use by Army Engineers. A complete design including algorithms, interface definitions, and a user interface will be developed. This capability will leverage an existing, PSI-developed 3D reconstruction algorithm used for automated terrain hazard detection using visible imagery data, and expand this framework to incorporate the other sensor data available in the ENFIRE system. PRRO will assist Army engineers by eliminating the need for slow handheld laser range finder measurements. The proposed development will maximize the effectiveness of the deployed ENFIRE system without the need to include additional hardware components.

For more information contact

Dr. John Wright
Area Manager, Advanced Sensing Technologies
jwright@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Army ERDC. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the National Institutes of Health to develop a miniaturized head-mounted neuronal imager for freely-behaving animals with high spatiotemporal resolution.

Cognitive functions of the brain are underpinned by complex and highly dynamic neural activities at the sub-cellular levels and millisecond time scales. To discover the normal/abnormal neuronal activities and thus understand detailed mechanisms of neurological disorders and dysfunctions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), measurement tools that offer sufficient spatiotemporal resolution are needed. Fluorescence imaging/microscopy is one of the state-of-the-art technologies for high spatial resolution recording of the activity of neuron populations. However, existing fluorescence neural imaging technologies generally have limited speed, providing less than a few hundred frames per second. High-speed imaging is particularly challenging for miniaturized, head-mounted imagers used for in vivo studies on freely-behaving animals. Moreover, current head-mounted fluorescence imagers use epi-fluorescence illumination, which cannot reject out-of-focus background fluorescence.

During this R&D program, Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and our academic collaborators propose to develop and demonstrate a high-speed (>kHz frame rate), head-mounted, confocal imager that can optically capture neuronal electrical activity with high spatiotemporal details. Technology innovations are proposed to enable this capability. First, an “active sensing” signal detection method combines two complementary imaging channels to achieve parallel neuronal recording with both sub-micron spatial resolution and sub-millisecond temporal resolution. Second, a novel hybrid fiber bundle scanning approach achieves confocal imaging capability based on a miniaturized optical setup. This R&D project will result in a robust technology for non-invasive recording of neuronal kinetics with high spatiotemporal resolution, offering a critical tool for neuroscience research.

For more information contact:

Dr. Youbo Zhao
Group Leader, Spectral Solutions
yzhao@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported by a contract with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the Defense Health Agency to develop a lightweight exoskeleton to assist warfighters and medics when carrying casualties on a litter.

The Defense Health Agency requires a device to augment the grip strength of service members and allow them to carry litters for longer distances. Currently, no such device exists in the standard military equipment set, and litters are simply carried by hand. Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes the Compact Litter Assist for Warfighters (CLAW), a passive, low profile, semi-rigid upper body exoskeleton that improves litter carrying distance by 200% by supplementing personnel grip strength and redistributing load from the hands to the shoulders and hips. It improves carrying capacity without reducing the user’s ability to conduct their medical and combat duties by utilizing deployable grippers stored in housings on the forearm. The load is transferred to the user via a soft harness system that fits under body armor.

For more information contact:

Dr. Sean Torrez
Area Manager, Deployable Structures
storrez@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Defense Health Agency at U.S. Army/Ft. Detrick. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.