FLARE has a wide range of capabilities and services to suit the needs of your project. Our expertise and partnership with the University of Florida applies to the following areas
1. Autonomous Systems
UF’s work on autonomous vehicles includes major contributions from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. (ECE), the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Dept. and the Transportation Institute (UFTI). In the ECE Dept., the Machine Intelligence Laboratory has a history of award-winning robots dating back to 2005. The SubjuGator is a three-time world champion in the RoboSub student competition and the NaviGator is the current Maritime RobotX Challenge winner.
The Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics (CIMAR) in the MAE Dept., develops autonomous ground vehicles. Their work has included navigation systems, collision avoidance systems and models of car-driver interactions. The biggest autonomous driving initiatives at UF have been at UFTI under its “Autonomous and Connected Vehicles” research initiative. In 2017, they received a five-year grant totaling $4.25M per year to test autonomous vehicles.
2. Information Assurance/Cyber Security
The Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research (FICS) is one of the nation’s premier institutes in the advancement of cybersecurity. FICS is arguably the only institute in the country that provides excellent expertise in all aspects of cybersecurity and assurance including hardware, network, mobile, big data, internet of things (IoT), applied crypto, social sciences, law and more. The FICS Research SeCurity and AssuraNce (SCAN) Lab contains state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar instruments that provide the capability to perform cutting-edge research on a variety of current hardware and software security issues and topics, from device-to-system assurance, security and integrity analysis.
3. Mission Related R&D and Prototyping
UF College of Engineering faculty have experience executing across all TRLs. It is FLARE’s purpose to focus and enhance these efforts. FLARE Director, Richard Vigeant, previously served as Engineering Deputy at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, where he led R&D efforts across all TRLs, serving numerous DoD sponsors on projects ranging from rapid-response delivery of field-able prototypes to safety-critical systems (missiles, space plane that docks with ISS, etc.). His leadership ensures work under this partnership remains mission-oriented.
4. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
UF has over 20 faculty members in the Information Systems and Operations Management Dept. focused on operations research and data analytics. Additional faculty throughout the University study these topics as related to their individual fields.
5. Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance
The greatest challenge faced in Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (PED) is creating usable final product from data gathered. UF has research efforts in several different functional areas that are working to improve information generation in big data environments. Other efforts include conducting research in distributed computing, which can decrease PED timelines. As well as, PED research that spans collection types that would enable USSOCOM PED cells to create comprehensive intelligence reports.
6. Hypersonic
Transportation and Energy Infrastructure (UFTI) provides solutions to a variety of transportation problems. It houses centers, such as McTrans, which is the largest transportation dissemination center in the world. UFTI is also home to the Southeastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development and Education (STRIDE) Center, one of ten Regional University Transportation Centers (UTCs). UF College of Engineering also has a number of researchers working on grid and infrastructure optimization as it relates to energy consumption.
7. Radar Systems and Remote Sensing
8. Micro and Nanotechnologies
UF has numerous areas of research that focus on the development and sustainment of integrated information systems. One example is an effort to ensure the security of hardware via tags to detect counterfeit electronics.
UF also has a variety of research groups focused on sensor networks. At the extremely applied end of the spectrum, the Smart Infrastructure Management Laboratory in the Civil Engineering Dept. builds wireless sensor networks to monitor bridges. The Wireless Information Networking Group has nine faculty members focused on efficient communication in wireless networks. Another example is the Optima Network Science laboratory which uses network analysis to optimize power and security of wireless sensor networks.
The ECE Dept. at UF has expertise in biometrics with a history of funding from various defense and intelligence agencies. Research includes fingerprints, ocular biometrics and behavior biometrics. Additionally, ECE is developing personal identification algorithms via voice processing.