SBIR/STTR Research Award
CANTEAN: Cave and Narrow Tunnel Exploration and Navigation
Award amount
$149,858Program and phase
SBIR · Phase IAward year
2019Award details
- Awarding agency
- Department of Defense
- Branch
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency
- Recipient company
- SCIENTIFIC SYSTEMS COMPANY, INC.
- Proposal award date
- 2019-05-06
- Contract end date
- 2019-12-05
- UEI
- C12TQVKF5413
- Solicitation number
- 18.2
- Topic code
- DTRA182-002
Research abstract
In response to the DTRA182-002 solicitation, we propose CANTEAN: Cave and Narrow Tunnel Exploration and Navigation, a flying system that employs the use of low-SWaP sensors and processors using advanced algorithms for rapid navigation and mapping of unknown, subterranean areas as part of a heterogeneous team. Bio-inspired obstacle avoidance and navigation and the efficient exchange and merging of submaps require only minimal sensors, processing, and periodic communications. CANTEAN will leverage SSCI’s existing, mature algorithms on low-SWaP-C commercial drone hardware to demonstrate subterranean exploration farther, faster, and more robustly than today’s state of the art systems. CANTEAN vehicles will extend the operational envelope of commercial drones to low-light and no-light environments and will return from exploration missions with a point-cloud based map of the explored regions which will be merged into a cohesive global map for follow-on mission.
Technology keywords
Not reported
Other awards by this recipient
Verified by the same UEI. These are other public SBIR/STTR award pages, not a merged company record.
- Robust and Autonomous Management of Mission Systems (RAMMS)
- AI-Aided Design (A2D)
- ASTAR-ASP: ADS-B Signal Transmission Authenticity Reckoner with Advanced Signal Processing
- PATCHWork: Processing and Analytic Task Coordination across Host Workers
- 3DMAST: Multimodal Accurate and Robust Novel View Synthesis for Ship Classification
Awards with the same topic code
Verified by an exact topic code match. This is not a text-similarity match.
- CANTEAN Phase II
- Pegasus(TM) Mini
- Autonomous navigation through small, confined spaces
- Cooperative RF-Trail Based closed, confined, and constrained Environment Navigation System
- Autonomous navigation through small, confined spaces
Research funding history
464 SBIR/STTR records share this UEI (1983–2025). Reported award amounts total $186,567,405. Reported amounts are not federal obligations.
Phases: Phase I, Phase II, Phase II – Direct to Phase II
Agencies: Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security