Special Programs


Creating Vanishingly Small Systems for Close-in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
Draper’s Special Programs directorate is dedicated to improving U.S. capabilities in reliable intelligence and special operations. Special Programs develops concepts, prototypes, low-rate production, and field support for first-of-a-kind systems for our sponsors.

Networked Systems
Collaboration between U.S. intelligence organizations, armed forces, and allies is vital to maintain an accurate, detailed representation of the world and to anticipate events. Draper provides advanced networking architectural analysis and software and hardware prototypes extending the reach of users around the globe through space, terrestrial wireless, and wireline networks, offering considerable improvements over current technologies. Recent programs include designing extended lifetime sensor networks and using diversity and coding techniques to produce reliable communications in challenging environments.

Exploitation Systems
Draper is advancing exploitation systems that strive to extract as much information as possible from sensors. One example is hyperspectral sensing, collection of hundreds of spectral measurements at everypixel from the image. Draper is developing novel signal processing approaches for detecting targets and identifying the material properties independent of concealment or camouflage.

Draper is expanding its expertise in the analysis of synthetic aperture radar imagery for performing automatic target recognition (ATR) with a goal of fusing measurements from multiple sensors to achieve optimal performance.

Surveillance Systems
Enhanced situational awareness is a key capability to improve the effectiveness of Special Programs forces in challenging environments. Draper has developed several radio frequency (RF) tracking systems that push the limits of Global Positioning System (GPS) size and fade (weak signal) capability. As Draper’s advanced packaging capabilities evolve, these complex systems occupy smaller volumes with increased functionality. Draper’s success in recovering GPS signals in deeply faded environments is pushing new limits of GPS signal processing. Our tagging and tracking programs include advanced optical tagging using passive retroreflection of light and unique optical phase modulation.

Another area of growing expertise is embedded audio/video systems. Building from experience with video subsystem architectures for teleoperated robotic platforms, Draper has developed miniature lowpower systems for audio/video capture and wireless transmission.

Bioengineering in Special Programs
Draper is combining its capabilities in bioengineering with its capabilities in electronics and signal processing to develop a system that detects and characterizes unique biological signatures.

Small, Low-Power Electronics
Draper maintains a leading role in developing ultrasmall, low-power electronics with a broad range of applications for Special Programs. Draper continues to pioneer multichip module technology for ultracompact electronics packaging, including developing novelmethods for employing mixed-signal components and demonstrating unprecedented levels of system integration.

Robotics
Draper continues to develop small robotic systems for surveillance and rescue applications, including precision airdrop systems, small undersea vehicles, ultrasmall unmanned air vehicles, and vehicles specifically designed to overcome difficult mobility challenges. These capabilities will allow our forces to be effective while avoiding hazardous or inaccessible environments.

Draper’s recent robotics work includes developing algorithms for control of high-degree-of-freedom (DOF) robots and snakelike robots as development/test/evaluation platforms. Draper has developed compact navigation sensors for robots, including sensors based on light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and gimbaled Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). Microactuator research with series elastic actuation (SEA), volume- and weight-efficient harmonic drives, and magneto-rheologic fluids as a means of controlling hydraulic valves has begun, promising highly efficient and amazingly small robotic platforms in the near future.

Examples of robots Draper has designed and built include

• High-Mobility Tactical Microrobot (HMTM): a small, lightweight reconnaissance robot that has a tracked and articulated vehicle architecture for rough terrain operation and an accompanying personal digital assistant (PDA)-based user interface. Features include robust wireless links over WiFi and cellular networks, image processing to support video stabilization, and moving-target tracking capabilities.

• Snake robot: a snake-like robot to explore multi-DOF serpentine mobility. This 60-in long, 16-segment robot has 32 independently controlled servos to enable various types of snake locomotion, including lateral undulation, inchworm, and sidewinding.

• Hexapod robot: a semi-autonomous 25-DOF legged robot with several walking gaits. Each of six individually controlled legs has a powered knee joint and a 2-DOF “hip” capable of horizontal and vertical motion. The robot can lift and turn its head and/or tail. It is equipped with a variety of sensors, a high-performance processor module, and a wireless communication link for audio/video and control signal transmission. Further autonomous behavior development is anticipated.

For the DARPA Defense Sciences Office, Draper is the system integrator for a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle and is leading the design of its avionics, propulsion, and GN&C subsystems. The vehicle specifications require that it weigh less than 8 grams and fit within a 3-in sphere. Draper’s GN&C algorithms and ultradense packaging will provide flight control from a 3-gram electronics package.

Contact Information: busdev@draper.com