NASA SBIR 2006 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Flight Landata Inc
One Parker Street
Lawrence, MA 01843-1548
(978) 682-7767

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Xiuhong   Sun
xsun@flightlandata.com
One Parker Street
Lawrence, MA  01843-1548
(978) 682-7767

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT ( Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The Gimbal-stabilized Compact Hyperspectral Imaging System (GCHIS) fully integrates multi-sensor spectral imaging, stereovision, GPS and inertial measurement, gimbal-stabilization, and gimbal-pointing-and-tracking capabilities into a compact light weight package. Advanced adaptive Kalman filter and attitude calibration algorithms are embedded for precision inertial measurement and real-time platform stabilization/pointing control. Innovative multi-thread-coded, fully parallel execution software is implemented with the latest multi-core CPU, which makes operation of GCHIS seamless. GCHIS concurrently acquires pushbroom hyperspectral imagery and multispectral snapshot stereo pairs. It features: 1) at least a 1392 pixel swathwidth and 5nm spectral resolution in the VNIR range for hyperspectral imaging; 2) at least 1600 x 1200 frame size for four band multispectral imaging; 3) 12 bit digitization depth for all imaging components; 4) less than 20lbs complete instrument mass; and 5) 1/100 degree platform stabilization/pointing accuracy. GCHIS has a fast data rate for high resolution and large area coverage. GCHIS can deliver one-foot resolution orthorectified hyperspectral imagery and inch level resolution multispectral stereo imagery. With gimbaled stabilization and programmable pointing, GCHIS is highly resistant to air turbulence and can handle diverse flight profiles, e.g. non-linear corridors and block areas, high and low altitudes, re-visiting or repeated measurement for change detection, and etc.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS ( Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
GCHIS is designed for NASA's interests in compact remote sensing instruments suitable for aircraft or space flight platforms with low mass, low power, fast measurement times, and a high degree of robustness to survive vibration in flight or at launch. GCHIS is cost-efficient for high performance spectral imaging/stereovision data collection. It is developed for Earth UAV operations first and Moon, Mars and beyond afterwards.
GCHIS near term applications include:
1) NASA aided international Earth remote sensing program in Thailand for airborne agricultural/environmental applications; and
2) deployment with UAV/Airship for field-expedient or persistent launch range surveillance/intrusion data collection.
Long term NASA applications include providing direct-geo-referenced hyperspectral and stereovision imagery to map:
1) the extent of certain Moon/Mars surface resources for identifying promising outpost/science sites and traversable terrains; and
2) the surface topography and roughness for identifying promising safe landing sites for human, robotic, pre-provisioning missions, and to guide pinpoint accurate landing algorithms.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS ( Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
GCHIS offers a fully integrated compact spectral imaging and stereovision system, which can be fitted into diverse light aircraft, small UAVs, and airships to provide low-cost and high performance commercial remote sensing solutions. Its competitive advantages include its foot resolution hyperspectral and inch resolution stereovision capabilities. As a programmable gimbaled instrument, it is also capable of performing most challenging remote sensing missions. That include:
1) homeland and national and international border security,
2) disaster and emergency response for recovery and rescue,
3) law enforcement, and
4) IED detection.
As an extremely cost-effective remote sensing tool, GCHIS has a great potential for other general remote sensing applications, including precision agriculture; crop growth status monitoring; vegetation species mapping; rainforest, forest and park services; environmental application; surface pollution detection; land-use surveys; water color, quality, waste discharge, and etc.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Attitude Determination and Control Computer System Architectures Data Input/Output Devices Guidance, Navigation, and Control Optical Photonics Portable Data Acquisition or Analysis Tools