An ultrasound examination that does not require patient contact. A web-based tool that could reinvent aircrew scheduling in the Air Force. Encryption hardware to protect sensitive data. and the world’s first practical memory for quantum networks.
These four technologies developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory alone or with collaborators received 2023 R&D 100 Awards. Ultrasonic Technology also received a second award in the special category, recognizing market-disrupting products.grantor R&D world magazine, the awards recognize the 100 most important innovations that have come into use or are available for sale or licensing in the past year. The global competition is judged by a panel of scientific and technical experts and industry professionals.
“Lincoln Laboratory is very fortunate to have received 86 R&D 100 awards over the past 14 years. Our conversion rates for unclassified technologies remain very high, and our classified projects have similarly high conversion rates. The Laboratory has achieved this through its successful technologies The development and transformation are truly changing the world. We congratulate all involved,” said Eric Evans, director of Lincoln Laboratory.
Non-contact ultrasound medical imaging
Many people are familiar with the ultrasound process—the sonographer presses a transducer against a patient’s skin and moves it around, collecting images of tissues and organs. Although ultrasound is a well-established technology, sonographer variability makes it difficult to accurately compare repeated measurements and is limited by the need for skin contact. For these reasons, magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography remain the primary imaging techniques for disease tracking, despite their high cost and lack of portability.
Non-contact laser ultrasound (NCLUS) for medical imaging overcomes these limitations. The skin-safe laser system acquires ultrasound images without touching the patient. It uses a pulsed laser that emits light energy that is converted into ultrasound waves when it hits tissue. The returning echoes are detected by a laser Doppler vibrometer and processed to produce an image. The system’s laser positioning on the body is accurately reproduced, eliminating variation from repeated scans. This reproducibility could allow ultrasound to be used to track disease progression, such as changes in tumor size over time.
Its non-contact design also opens up entirely new uses for ultrasound: “NCLUS can be used on patients with burns or trauma, patients with immediate deep tissue areas open during surgery, premature infants requiring intensive care, patients with neck and spine injuries, and patients with infectious diseases. imaging of sexual individuals,” said NCLUS co-inventor Robert Haupt.
With NCLUS, medical personnel without sonography training may be able to perform ultrasound imaging outside the hospital—in a doctor’s office, at home, or in a remote battlefield environment. Due to its game-changing potential in the medical imaging industry, NCLUS received an R&D 100 Silver Award in the category “Special Recognition: Market Disruptive Products” in addition to the R&D 100 Award.
Both awards were jointly received by the Massachusetts General Hospital Ultrasound Research and Translation Center and Sound & Bright LLC.
Unit dispatch optimizer
The U.S. Air Force has strong scheduling needs. Its fleet of C-17s, cargo aircraft that transport troops and supplies around the world, logged 4 million flight hours last year. Until recently, Air Force pilots such as pilots and loaders had to manually schedule each flight’s crew on a whiteboard.
Puckboard changes that. For the first time since the beginning of military flight scheduling nearly 80 years ago, this web-based application provides intelligent, training-based scheduling capabilities and returns valuable time to pilots, allowing them to focus on their primary responsibilities .
Puckboard’s collaboration tools provide dispatchers with assignment recommendations while allowing crews to volunteer for activities that best fit their personal lives. In addition to providing digital calendar functionality, Puckboard applies artificial intelligence technology to recommend optimal schedules considering metrics such as crew training progress, flight time distribution, avoidance of overqualification and allocation vulnerability. Today, Puckboard has 24,000 users and more than 315,000 events scheduled for 87 squadrons.
“Puckboard’s impact is a direct reflection of the breadth and depth of skills and genuine enthusiasm of all contributors. From designers, software engineers and algorithm experts, to active duty squadrons and aircrews, all the way to senior leadership – everyone is committed to delivering Improving the readiness of the U.S. Air Force by improving the quality of life of our Airmen,” said Michael Snyder, the project’s principal investigator. “Scheduling is a complex topic made even more difficult amid uncertainty, and this effort demonstrates the ability to resolve any issue with the appropriate team.”
This R&D 100 award is shared with MIT, RevaComm, Department of the Air Force – MIT AI Accelerator, 15th Air Force Wing, 60th Air Mobility Wing, 437th Airlift Wing, Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Air Force Research Laboratory, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Power (Facilities, Environment and Energy) and Raytheon-BBN.
A device to protect data on unmanned platforms
For the U.S. military, unmanned systems are increasingly being used to minimize harm to human operators. Because these systems often transmit sensitive data over the air, their radio components must be certified by the National Security Agency (NSA). The military could benefit from this certification process, which for years has been an insurmountable hurdle for many small businesses and would-be radio technology and robotics innovators. Such developers now have access to NSA-certified security solutions developed by Lincoln Laboratory that are ready for deployment across a variety of vehicles and missions.
The Security/Network Module (SCM) End Cryptozoology Unit (ECU) is a compact device that protects the tactical data link of unmanned systems. The module modernizes security by integrating multiple cybersecurity technologies, most notably a technology called Tactical Key Management that dynamically establishes keys to enable secure communications. The module is the first cryptographic device designed for a broad range of unmanned systems within the Joint Communications Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JCAUS), a recent U.S. Department of Defense effort to modularize unmanned system radio links and Standardization allows reuse of NSA-certified component functions and interfaces.
Since delivery, the U.S. Navy has awarded Tomahawk Robotics a full production contract to provide SCM ECUs for its explosive ordnance disposal robots. “While SCM/ECU was primarily developed for Navy ground robots, SCM/ECU follows JCAUS, ensuring it is well suited for airborne and underwater vehicles,” said Ben Nahill, principal investigator on the project.
The award is shared with the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific.
Scalable photonic memory for quantum networks
In quantum information processing, memory receives and stores the state of a quantum bit (qubit), similar to how the memory of an ordinary communication system or computer receives and stores binary state information. Memory makes it possible to reliably send and receive information between different systems, even across lossy transmission links. Lincoln Laboratory’s quantum memory is the first to combine in a single module the three capabilities needed to network separate quantum systems: a photonic interface, a way to correct lost errors, and a memory that can scale to dozens of memories in a single module architecture. Until now, quantum storage systems have lacked one or more of these capabilities.
Ben Dixon, who led the work, said: “This module removes many of the barriers to deploying quantum memories into real-world environments and testbeds and actually using them to develop emerging advanced quantum applications such as distributed sensing and networked quantum processing. “.
Photonic interfaces allow qubits to be transported between memory and fiber optic networks via light particles (photons). The lab’s quantum memory uses silicon vacancy (SiV) diamond color centers, an atomic-like structure that can be efficiently manipulated with light even at the single-photon level. This SiV technology can also correct signal loss errors caused by inefficient and lossy network links. Because it utilizes single atomic color centers, the technique is compatible with efficient “foreshadowing” protocols, where a signal confirms the successful transmission of a photon across the network and the storage of the associated qubit in memory.
SiV modules are also scalable. SiV memory cells are integrated into custom photonic integrated circuits, and the technology is capable of sending and receiving signals and can be scaled to hundreds of parallel channels. Laboratory researchers combined this integration approach with a unique packaging architecture to integrate eight quantum memories into a single module. Additional memory can be integrated into this single module, which can be connected with additional modules for further expansion.
In addition to these award-winning technologies, five other Lincoln Laboratory technologies are R&D 100 Award finalists. A gala celebrating the 2023 winners will be held on November 16 in San Diego, California.