Project Grant R44AG034739

Federal Grant Award Summary Award Details: Funding Agency: National Eye Institute (NEI) Federal Grant Program: Vision Research (CFDA 93.867) Awardee: Newhaptics Corp, Ann Arbor, Michigan Total Obligated Funds: $559,871 Award Date: July 1, 2025 Project Period: Two years (completion date June 30, 2027) Products and Services: Newhaptics Corp will develop TITO (Touch-In-Touch-Out), a refreshable Braille and tactile graphic display device equipped with multipoint touch sensing capabilities designed...

Tatum Robotics LLC was awarded a $255,975 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an accessible robotic system for deafblind communication. Funded through NSF's Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program, the award aims to create a fully compliant anthropomorphic robotic hand capable of fingerspelling tactile sign language at variable speeds. The system will translate between spoken and signed languages to provide deafblind individuals new independence and access to...

Refined Imaging, LLC was awarded a $200,000 cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the Science, Technology, Business and/or Education Outreach federal grant program to develop a secure, printable ink technique for cyber-tracking additive manufactured parts. The company will conduct proof of concept experiments to program 3D printers to modulate material porosity during deposition, resulting in an optically invisible patterned code that can be...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program award to Purdue University supports research to develop high-performance tactile sensors that can detect various sizes of objects within microseconds, comparable to human skin. The $510,542 grant, awarded on November 1, 2023, will fund the manufacturing of these sensors using 3D printing and conformal polymer coating techniques. The research aims to create a new manufacturing capability for hierarchically architected structures with...

This $256,000 National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I Project Grant will support the development of a haptic glove for real-time speech comprehension by Subtle Technology LLC. The glove aims to convert auditory speech into information perceivable through the skin as a potential supplement to existing techniques like lip reading for the over 466 million people worldwide with hearing loss. Key objectives include developing an intuitive touch-based language representation of words and a...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program provides $305,000 to Elektrum Technologies, Inc. to develop an additive manufacturing process for producing low-cost, flexible, and transparent conductive electrodes. The goal is to create a more cost-effective alternative to indium tin oxide, which is a brittle material currently used in many optoelectronic applications. The Phase I project will focus on two key...

This Cooperative Agreement award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) provides $1,000,000 to Iris Light Technologies Inc., a small business in Chicago, Illinois, to develop foundry-scale production of on-chip silicon photonic light emitters enabled by printed photonic ink. The project aims to create black phosphorus-based inks that can be integrated directly onto silicon photonic chips to produce on-chip lasers. This...

Federal Grant Award Summary This $300,000 EAGER (Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research) award from the National Science Foundation's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CFDA 47.041—Engineering) supports fundamental research at Texas Tech University to develop innovative acoustic array-assisted three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology. The project, active from September 1, 2025, through August 31, 2027, focuses on enabling dynamic, layer-by-layer cell...

The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University will leverage a haptic display to communicate robot learning and accelerate human teaching under a $249,688 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant falls under the Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070), which supports investigator-initiated research and education across computing, communications, and information science and engineering. Specifically, Virginia Tech...

Federal Cooperative Agreement Summary Award: Tatum Robotics LLC received a $1.25M Cooperative Agreement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) effective September 15, 2025, with completion targeted for August 31, 2027. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award funds development of the Tatum Signing System (TSS), a compliant robotic communication platform designed to provide real-time, independent communication...