NASA STTR 2011 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (SBC):		RESEARCH INSTITUTION (RI):
NAME:	Innovative Imaging and Research	NAME:	University of Houston Clear Lake
STREET:	Building 1103, Suite 140C	STREET:	2700 Bay Area Blvd.
CITY:	Stennis Space Center	CITY:	Houston
STATE/ZIP:	MS  39529 - 0001	STATE/ZIP:	TX  77058 - 1002
PHONE:	(228) 688-2452	PHONE:	(281) 283-2138

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Robert E Ryan
rryan@i2rcorp.com
Building 1103, Suite 140C
Stennis Space Center, MS 39259 - 0001
(228) 688-2276

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 4
End: 7

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
Innovative Imaging and Research and the University of Houston Clear Lake have teamed to develop a widely extensible, affordable, energy efficient, smart lighting device known as Lambda-Net. Smart building technologies, such as Lambda-Net, are becoming critical to energy savings and sustainability for terrestrial applications and space-based habitats. Our device incorporates a smart-mobile device or other comparable sized integrated computing/sensing device into each LED fixture. Smart-mobile devices are ideally suited to perform energy saving lighting control as they contain inexpensive, mass produced, highly integrated imaging, computing and communication technologies. The low cost digital cameras within these packages become highly capable imaging photosensors using calibration techniques developed for NASA satellites and the commercial remote sensing industry. Novel algorithms utilize lighting information measured by the photosensors to individually tailor the intensity and spectral content of the light generated from each LED fixture within the lighting system to reduce energy usage, increase lighting efficacy and improve circadian rhythm influenced activities such as sleeping and concentration. Advanced spatially distributed occupancy sensing and lighting control further reduces energy usage. Integrating sensing and computing into each light fixture also provides the infrastructure to create a robust sensor network. Network communication is achieved through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other communication means, such as the power lines that provide electricity to each fixture. This resulting sensor network enables a wide range of terrestrial and space-based applications including monitoring: building/habitat temperature, humidity and air quality; occupant health and safety; building/habitat space utilization and astronaut activity including deep space adaptation in addition to providing high quality spatially selectable, spectrally programmable illumination.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The Lambda-Net technology provides NASA energy efficient, high quality space habitat lighting that can be spectrally tuned to help mitigate astronaut sleep disorders and circadian rhythm induced responses. The wireless sensor network inherent in the design also provides NASA a means by which they can monitor environmental parameters, space utilization and astronaut activity including deep space adaptation within space habitats. The technology can also help NASA meet government mandates that require Federal agencies to significantly reduce their building energy use. United States Executive Order 13423, issued in January 2007, mandates that federal buildings reduce their energy use by 3 percent per year, so that they attain a 30 percent reduction in energy use by the year 2015. In general these will be NASA office and laboratory environments with partial solar illumination, that take advantage of the daylight harvesting feature of our smart light concept, and locations within NASA facilities that are intermittently populated such as stairwells and bathrooms, that take advantage of the occupancy sensing technology within our smart light concept. We also anticipate large payoff for NASA adopting this technology in areas that would benefit from security and fire protection monitoring, additional features that our Lambda-Net smart light system provides.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The Lambda-Net technology provides government and commercial entities energy efficient, high quality lighting within a low cost wireless sensor network. We believe our technology will have significant appeal within the education sector. Throughout the country more and more school districts are incorporating "green school" concepts. The Green Schools Initiative incorporates a 4-pillared framework that includes energy efficiency and using resources sustainably. We plan to engage with these programs and initiatives to showcase our unique technology, which is highly applicable to educational environments. Our smart light technology not only reduces the overall amount of energy consumed through efficient light harvesting- automatically adjusting the amount of light produced in response to available sunlight, but is also capable of tailoring the spectrum of the light it produces to affect natural biorhythms, which has been shown to improve academic attention. Since it provides spectrally selectable illumination, it can also be marketed to researches performing circadian rhythm studies. Other potential markets include libraries, museums and other public places that would benefit from enhancement of security and fire protection monitoring enabled through the Lambda-Net wireless sensor network.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (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.)

3D Imaging Ad-Hoc Networks (see also Sensors) Algorithms/Control Software & Systems (see also Autonomous Systems) Circuits (including ICs; for specific applications, see e.g., Communications, Networking & Signal Transport; Control & Monitoring, Sensors) Data Acquisition (see also Sensors) Data Processing Detectors (see also Sensors) Fire Protection Image Analysis Image Processing Radiometric Visible