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The Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA) University Research Program is a sponsored research program created to drive the next generation of technology for the material handling industry. The industry's end-to-end approach to provide complete solutions to customers that are smarter, more efficient and more effective has fueled this program. The mission is to encourage professors and researchers to apply their knowledge of engineering and technical fields, drawing synergies and collaboration between collegiate research and Toyota Material Handling North America.

The primary objective is to support scholarships for nuclear science, engineering, technology and related disciplines to develop a workforce capable of supporting the design, construction, operation, and regulation of nuclear facilities and the safe handling of nuclear materials. The primary objective is to support fellowships for nuclear science, engineering, technology and related disciplines to develop a workforce capable of supporting the design, construction, operation, and regulation of nuclear facilities and the safe handling of nuclear materials. The primary objective is to support faculty development for nuclear science, engineering, technology and related disciplines to develop a workforce capable of supporting the design, construction, operation, and regulation of nuclear facilities and the safe handling of nuclear materials. The grants specifically target probationary, tenure-track faculty during the first 6 years of their career and new faculty hires in the following academic areas: Nuclear, Mechanical, Civil, Environmental, Electrical, Fire Protection, Geotechnical, Structural and Materials Sciences Engineering as well as Health Physics. The program provides support to enable newer faculty to enhance their careers as professors and researchers in the university department where employed.

The lack of logistics systems capable of handling and delivering sufficiently high tonnage year-round volumes of high quality feedstocks to support the rapid escalation of cellulosic biofuels production has been identified as a significant barrier to the expansion of a sustainable domestic biofuels industry. In particular, biomass physical and chemical quality parameters have repeatedly been identified as significant challenges to the smooth operation and economic viability of biorefineries. This FOA will focus on developing and demonstrating strategies, equipment, and rapid analytical methods to manage feedstock quality within economic constraints throughout the feedstock supply chain. The main effort in Proposals must be directed toward full-scale demonstration of integrated feedstock supply chain systems that can deliver the volume of high quality, affordable, high impact feedstocks required by commercial biorefineries over a significant geographic area in the United States. DOE plans to support the increased production of high volumes of sustainably produced domestic biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks by seeking Proposals to design new systems or adapt existing systems to handle industrial scale volumes of cellulosic feedstocks from the harvest point to the throat of the biorefinery reactor.

The purpose of the SCRI program is to address the critical needs of the specialty crop industry by awarding grants to support research and extension that address key challenges of national, regional, and multi-state importance in sustaining all components of food and agriculture, including conventional and organic food production systems. Projects must address at least one of five focus areas: Research in plant breeding, genetics, genomics, and other methods to improve crop characteristics; Efforts to identify and address threats from pests and diseases, including threats to specialty crop pollinators; Efforts to improve production efficiency, handling and processing, productivity, and profitability over the long term (including specialty crop policy and marketing); new innovations and technology, including improved mechanization and technologies that delay or inhibit ripening; and methods to prevent, detect, monitor, control, and respond to potential food safety hazards in the production efficiency, handling and processing of specialty crops.

The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to solicit proposals from firms experienced in the development and implementation of Robotics Process Automation (RPA) solutions. BWC is interested in evaluating solutions which would enable the agency to automate structured repetitive tasks to minimize manual intervention and introduce process efficiencies. Such processes will typically require the bots to access multiple systems, various formats of data like text, excel workbooks, word, databases and subsequently retrieve, populate and generate data fields based on responses. The proposed solution must have the capability to automate end to end processes and contain inherent logic handling mechanisms with exception handling.

A. Research Areas of Interest SOF medical personnel place a premium on medical equipment that is small, lightweight, ruggedized, and designed for operation in extreme environments. The equipment must be easy to use, require minimum maintenance, and have low power consumption. Drugs and biologics should not require refrigeration or other special handling. All materiel and related techniques must be simple and effective. Research projects may apply existing scientific and technical knowledge for which concept and/or patient care efficacy have already been demonstrated to meet SOF requirements. 1. Damage Control Resuscitation SOF medical personnel require capabilities for far-forward medical care to reduce the mortality and morbidity associated with major battlefield wounds and injuries. The primary emphasis is to research, apply and/or develop medical techniques and materiel (medical devices, drugs, and biologics) for early intervention in life-threatening battle injuries when MEDEVAC is not possible.

A. Research Areas of Interest SOF medical personnel place a premium on medical equipment that is small, lightweight, ruggedized, and designed for operation in extreme environments. The equipment must be easy to use, require minimum maintenance, and have low power consumption. Drugs and biologics should not require refrigeration or other special handling. All materiel and related techniques must be simple and effective. Research projects may apply existing scientific and technical knowledge for which concept and/or patient care efficacy have already been demonstrated to meet SOF requirements.

The Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) pilot seeks to support bold interdisciplinary projects in all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research. INSPIRE has no targeted themes and serves as a funding mechanism for proposals that are required both to be interdisciplinary and to exhibit potentially transformative research (IDR and PTR, respectively). Complementing existing NSF efforts, INSPIRE was created to handle proposals whose:

The primary objective is to support scholarships for nuclear science, engineering, technology and related disciplines to develop a workforce capable of supporting the design, construction, operation, and regulation of nuclear facilities and the safe handling of nuclear materials. The nuclear-related discipline supported by this funding is intended to benefit the nuclear sector broadly

This program seeks to prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering research and contribute to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security. The goals of this solicitation are to (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI; and (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven science and engineering into the Nation's educational curriculum/instructional material fabric spanning undergraduate and graduate courses for advancing fundamental research. Pilot and Implementation projects may target one or both of the solicitation goals, while Large-scale Project Conceptualization projects must address both goals. For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the set of resources, tools, methods, and services for advanced computation, large-scale data handling and analytics, and networking and security for large-scale systems that collectively enable potentially transformative fundamental research.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports the research and development of key early-stage technical challenges for fuel cells and for hydrogen fuel production, delivery and storage, and will leverage the private sector to address institutional barriers that impact progress in the field. The goal of this research activity is to provide affordable, clean, safe, and reliable energy from diverse domestic resources, providing the benefits of increased energy security and reduced emissions through early-stage research and development. The global fuel cell market increased its growth 40% in 2016, with revenues of over $1.6 billion in 2016 and over 20,000 fuel cell units for material handling equipment purchased in the U.S. alone since 2009. Light duty vehicles are an emerging application for fuel cells that has earned substantial commercial and government interest worldwide due to the superior efficiencies, reductions in petroleum consumption, and reductions in criteria pollutants fuel cells make possible.

The Smart and Autonomous Systems (S&AS) program focuses on Intelligent Physical Systems (IPS) that are capable of robust, long-term autonomy requiring minimal or no human operator intervention in the face of uncertain, unanticipated, and dynamically changing situations. IPS are systems that combine perception, cognition, communication, and actuation to operate in the physical world. Examples include, but are not limited to, robotic platforms, self-driving vehicles, underwater exploration vehicles, and smart grids. Most current IPS operate in pre-programmed ways and in a limited variety of contexts. They are largely incapable of handling novel situations, or of even understanding when they are outside their areas of expertise. To achieve robust, long-term autonomy, however, future IPS need to be aware of their capabilities and limitations and to adapt their behaviors to compensate for limitations and/or changing conditions. To foster such intelligent systems, the S&AS program supports research in four main aspects of IPS: cognizant, taskable, adaptive, and ethical. Cognizant IPS exhibit high-level awareness of their own capabilities and limitations, anticipating potential failures and re-planning accordingly. Taskable IPS can interpret high-level, possibly vague, instructions, planning out and executing concrete actions that are dependent on the particular context in which the system is operating. Adaptive IPS can change their behaviors over time, learning from their own experiences and those of other entities, such as other IPS or humans, and from instruction or observation. Ethical IPS should adhere to a system of societal and legal rules, taking those rules into account when making decisions. Each of these research areas requires the IPS to be knowledge-rich, employing a variety of representation and reasoning mechanisms, such as semantic, probabilistic, commonsense, and meta-reasoning.

The Smart and Autonomous Systems (S&AS) program focuses on Intelligent Physical Systems (IPS) that are capable of robust, long-term autonomy requiring minimal or no human operator intervention in the face of uncertain, unanticipated, and dynamically changing situations. IPS are systems that combine perception, cognition, communication, and actuation to operate in the physical world. Examples include, but are not limited to, robotic platforms, self-driving vehicles, underwater exploration vehicles, and smart grids. Most current IPS operate in pre-programmed ways and in a limited variety of contexts. They are largely incapable of handling novel situations, or of even understanding when they are outside their areas of expertise. To achieve robust, long-term autonomy, however, future IPS need to be aware of their capabilities and limitations and to adapt their behaviors to compensate for limitations and/or changing conditions.

On January 16, 2018, The Department of Transportation will post a request for letters of interest to perform and document the statewide Systems Engineering Analysis for Autonomous/Connected Vehicle (SEA AV/CV) projects in conformance with 23 CFR 940 and Section 1300 of the Traffic Engineering Manual. Included with this effort will be a review, and recommendations of necessary updates, to the existing statewide and MPO Regional ITS Architectures to ensure consistency with the developed SEA AV/CV document. The goal of this effort is to create the statewide framework to guide current and future AV/CV deployments. The requirements of 23 CFR 940 will be handled at the program level to the extent possible via this effort rather than on a project-by-project basis.

The Smart and Autonomous Systems (S&AS) program focuses on Intelligent Physical Systems (IPS) that are capable of robust, long-term autonomy requiring minimal or no human operator intervention in the face of uncertain, unanticipated, and dynamically changing situations. IPS are systems that combine perception, cognition, communication, and actuation to operate in the physical world. Examples include, but are not limited to, robotic platforms, self-driving vehicles, underwater exploration vehicles, and smart grids. Most current IPS operate in pre-programmed ways and in a limited variety of contexts. They are largely incapable of handling novel situations, or of even understanding when they are outside their areas of expertise. To achieve robust, long-term autonomy, however, future IPS need to be aware of their capabilities and limitations and to adapt their behaviors to compensate for limitations and/or changing conditions.

The program provides funding to support research and development for nuclear science, engineering, technology, and related disciplines to develop a workforce capable of supporting the design, construction, operation, and regulation of nuclear facilities and the safe handling of nuclear materials. More specifically, the program supports future-focused research aimed at helping NRC prepare for upcoming challenges. These include but are not limited to: (a) the continued safe operation of existing nuclear reactors; (b) the regulation of future advanced nuclear reactors, including demonstration and development activities and relevant fuel cycle technologies; and (c) the transformation of NRC into a modern, risk-informed regulator. The latter involves activities to increasingly risk-inform NRC's regulatory framework, decision-making processes, procedures, and guidance in all of its regulatory arenas.

The program supports four main research themes that are envisioned to advance the goal of ubiquitous co-robots:scalability,customizability,lowering barriers to entry, andsocietal impact,includinghuman safety. Topics addressingscalabilityinclude how robots can collaborate effectively with orders of magnitude more humans or other robots than is handled by the current state of the art; how robots can perceive, plan, act, and learn in uncertain, real-world environments, especially in a distributed fashion; and how to facilitate large-scale, safe, robust and reliable operation of robots in complex environments.Customizabilityincludes how to enable co-robots to adapt to specific different tasks, environments, or people, with minimal modification to hardware and software; how robots can personalize their interactions with people; and how robots can communicate naturally with humans, both verbally and non-verbally. Topics inlowering barriers to entryshould focus on lowering the barriers for conducting fundamental roboticsresearchand research on integrated robotics application. This may include development of open-source co-robot hardware and software, as well as widely-accessible testbeds. Outreach or using robots in educational programs do not, by themselves, lower the barriers to entry for robotics research. Topics insocietal impactinclude fundamental research to establish and infuse robotics into educational curricula, advance the robotics workforce through education pathways, and explore the social, economic, ethical, security, and legal implications of our future with ubiquitous collaborative robots.

The program supports four main research themes that are envisioned to advance the goal of ubiquitous co-robots: scalability, customizability, lowering barriers to entry, and societal impact, including human safety. Topics addressing scalability include how robots can collaborate effectively with orders of magnitude more humans or other robots than is handled by the current state of the art; how robots can perceive, plan, act, and learn in uncertain, real-world environments, especially in a distributed fashion; and how to facilitate large-scale, safe, robust and reliable operation of robots in complex environments. Customizability includes how to enable co-robots to adapt to specific different tasks, environments, or people, with minimal modification to hardware and software; how robots can personalize their interactions with people; and how robots can communicate naturally with humans, both verbally and non-verbally. Topics in lowering barriers to entry should focus on lowering the barriers for conducting fundamental robotics research and research on integrated robotics application.