2053 Fountain Professional Centre, Suite B Navarre, FL 32566

Contract Award:

The U. S Department of Transportation (USDOT) Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) has awarded a Cooperative Agreement to the University of Wyoming’s Western Research Institute (WRI, Laramie, WY) for a total of $871,000 over a two-year period.  The research team will work with state and local agencies, industry partners and service providers to develop and field test a more efficient system for determining the structural integrity and life span of asphalt pavement in order to reduce maintenance costs.  Under this Agreement, Innova Engineering, LLC (Navarre, FL) is a partner to WRI in the development of an Asphalt Surface Aging Prediction (ASAP) system prototype that will support remote-sensing measurements in the field. As part of the ASAP project, Innova Engineering will develop a Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Michelson interferometer spectrometer using new monolithic optical block technologies pioneered by PLX, Inc. (Deer Park, NY). Under the contract, WRI will conduct a series of asphalt-aging tests using laboratory FTIR spectrometers to further advance the detection of carbonyl content in asphalt pavement and its relationship to asphalt stiffness and aging prediction.  This first-of-a-kind field-portable spectrometer will be used to collect asphalt spectrographic samples that will be used to predict asphalt aging similarly to proven laboratory test techniques.  Founded in 2004, Innova Engineering is a small business located in Navarre, FL, under the leadership of Mr. Greg Fountain and Mr. Dan Matthews.

Current Contract Activities:

Innova Engineering is currently providing technical consulting support to John Deere’s OptiGrow™ airborne systems that support prescription farming business areas. Support includes analyzing various GPS receivers for integration with inertial measurement units to support geo-registration of each camera pixels on the ground. The camera subsystem supports up to eight digital cameras with various red, green, blue, and near infrared filters used to predict crop stress.  Innova supported development of a collimator system used to calibrate each camera pointing errors relative to a truth camera, as well as a technique to characterize the lens aberrations to support precision geo-registration of pixels on the ground. Other activities included supporting algorithms to mosaic each camera frame into a large-scale geo-registered map of the agriculture regions of interest, and terabyte server implementation for the serving large data files to customers and analysts. Finally, Innova recently supported a major flight test program of the OptiGrow™  system including 90 missions over target fields, processing of the collected data into integrated maps, and serving the data to targeted customer entities.

Innova Engineering also provided proposal and technical support to a small disadvantaged business for the Special Operations Forces Planning, Rehearsal, Evaluation and Preparation (SOFPREP) solicitation for Air Force and Army organizations. Intelligence data is converted into imagery databases that feed various flight simulators providing visualization of planned Special Operation airborne missions used to prepare for actual missions.

Innova Engineering has submitted SBIR proposals for: US DOT 05-RT2 Remotely Piloted Vehicles – Zeppelins to create “as built” plans for transportation infrastructure that included a thrust-vector controlled 20 foot dirigible, AF05-164 Air Force Micro Air Deployed Munition for Cluttered Terrain, Army A01-071 Passive Terrain Following.for helicopters, Army A02-074 Ultra Wideband Network, and a Wind-Field Mapper for Bridge Structures proposing to use schlerion photography on reduced-scale bridge models in wind tunnels. These submissions are indicative of business areas the Innova is striving to provide a service.