SBIR Phase I: Autonomous Vehicle Multi-Sensor Obstacle Detection Safety System

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project enables low-cost, high-performance sensing for a wide range of commercial applications. Robotics and automation technology are on the rise.Autonomous systems must perform at high standards of safety while maintaining high efficiencies for task completion. The Phase I project is focusedon robotic sensing to provide better information and decision-making capabilities to applications across industries. This work addresses the ever growing need for safe robotics and automation.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to improve sensing and decision making in the real world with a focus on robotic applications. During this phase, the performance of existing sensing and processing solutions will be tailored to specific target environments. This tailoring is enabled by fusing synthesis of above-human level data and contextual cues from multiple sources to build better understand machine observables. The output from this effort will be a cumulative, high-performance sensing and decision-making solution tuned for robotic platforms. The technology seeks to demonstrate the ability to provide an integrated sensor system that is redundant, reliable, cheap, and easily deployable based on existing autonomous robotic systems. The project will specifically enable obstacle detection capabilities for low-speed autonomous mobile robotic applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.