SBIR Phase I: Blockchain-Enabled Machine Learning on Confidential Data is sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF). This program supports small businesses developing novel distributed-ledger and blockchain solutions.

Portfolio details | NSF SBIR Check recent critical alerts! (Last updated 4/16/2026) NSF will resume the submission of new Project Pitches to the SBIR/STTR programs in the coming weeks. Program Directors will continue to process Project Pitches that were previously received.

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Try a new search or return to previous page to try again. Loading company results... 4 D Technology Corporation SBIR Phase II: High-Resolution Shop Floor Video-Rate Surface Metrology System 3280 E Hemisphere Loop, Ste 146 Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf.

gov . This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop and produce a robust, hand-held, video-rate three-dimensional surface metrology system with vertical and lateral resolution of several micrometers, in order to bridge a critical existing metrology gap for precision-machined surfaces.

Many modern manufactured parts, such as turbine blades, drive shafts, orthopedics, and various additive manufactured components require in-situ metrology with high resolution for accurate characterization during manufacturing and/or maintenance operations. Current high-resolution surface measurement systems are slow, vibration-sensitive and laboratory-based and thus are impractical for everyday use by manufacturing technicians.

Meanwhile, shop-floor inspection is often only visual, and thus qualitative rather than quantitative, leading both to rejections of acceptable components as well as potential acceptance of failing ones. The absence of high-precision, in-situ metrology has hindered manufacturers from applying real-time data analysis and closed-loop process controls that can improve yields and reduce manufacturing costs.

This research program will yield a hand-held, easy-to-use, robust, and quantitative shop-floor measurement system, allowing manufacturers to improve lifetimes, performance, and yield as they rapidly assess the features under test and feed the results back to improve process control.

During Phase I, a breadboard system was designed and implemented using a polarization-based fringe projection method and micropolarizer phase-mask technology to achieve vibration insensitive measurement in a compact package. This Phase II program leverages that research to design a video-rate, compact, robust and portable system for handheld surface measurements in shop-floor environments.

This will first involve improvements to measurement resolution with an improved optical design and new self-calibrating measurement modes; new optical elements will lower noise artifacts caused by imperfections in the earlier design and to reduce system size.

Once performance of the new design is verified, an ergonomic, compact, robust, wireless housing for the instrument must be created to enable shop-floor use; the system must handle drops of over one meter onto concrete, have useful battery life for extended field operations, be light enough to not fatigue users and have intuitive controls and feedback.

A final, critically important development effort will create automated software routines for measurement, analysis, and system diagnostics to enable adoption by unskilled personnel in manufacturing environments. Lastly, extensive applications testing in the field will allow optimization of the system to handle a wide range of potential use cases and environments.

APPLIED LIFESCIENCES & SYSTEMS POULTRY, INC. SBIR Phase II: Innovative High Throughput Automated System for Individualized Poultry Vaccination and Recognition and Removal of Unhealthy Chicks Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project has the potential to help enhance disease resistance in poultry and increase yields due to the delivery of only healthy, fully vaccinated chicks to farms. These healthier chicks will reduce the need for antibiotics in poultry, aiding to combat antimicrobial resistance.

This technology has immediate applications in other food animal industries and fisheries, and allows for data capture on numbers of animals and types of treatments given. Broader applications would include any image capture and analysis that relies on analytics to identify target areas for delivery of substances to live animals or humans.

This SBIR Phase II project will allow for the advancement and commercialization of imaging technologies for the use of screening and targeting live animals. This proposal brings innovation in the care of food animals allowing for producers to move away from flock health and focus on the care of individual animals.

This will be a dramatic change for the poultry industry, but is necessary in the face of antibiotic removal to be able to improve the current vaccination efficiencies and screen chicks for health status. Individualized care is currently not possible due to the high throughput needed to keep pace with large scale commercial hatchery operation.

The technical challenges this proposal will overcome include 1) the safe and effective handling of chicks in an automated system that can process 100,000 chicks per hour, 2) the development of imaging systems for health checks and target recognition, 3) the delivery of the appropriate dose of vaccine with the correct amount of agents (virus, bacteria, parasite, and other agents) while not damaging the agents during delivery, and 4) development of a system that is rugged and robust enough to survive in a hatchery environment.

SBIR Phase II: High-yield Fermentation of Sugars to Levulinic Acid Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov . This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project focuses on the development of a high-yield fermentation route for the production of levulinic acid (LA).

LA is one of the best-suited C5 building blocks for bio-refinery production due to higher value, broad applications, and likely quick adoption by the chemical industry. During Phase I, this project has designed and experimentally validated the concept of a novel fermentation pathway for the production of LA.

The focus of this Phase II work will be to transition from this technical proof-of-concept to the development of a lab-scale fermentation process. The limiting enzymatic steps in the designed pathway will first be optimized to reach levels of activity consistent with the flux/yield required for economical production.

Variants of the designed pathway incorporating the original and optimized enzymes will subsequently be cloned into suitable fermentation organism(s). Using computational and experimental metabolic engineering tools, knock-out and knock-down mutations will be performed to further optimize flux/yield in the pathway while optimizing for host cell growth.

This work represents the first commercial application of enzyme design to rationally engineer novel metabolic pathway that do not have any natural counterpart, bringing us closer to the dream of designer cell factories. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is the advancement of a U.S. green chemistry industry and to allow America to take the lead in the commercial production of a new renewable chemical building block.

The lack of a high-yield alternative to costly thermo-chemical processes has been preventing widespread adoption of levulinic acid (LA). Because LA can be converted, chemically or biochemically, to synthetic rubber (through isoprene and butenes), bio-fuels (such as kerosene and HMF), polymers (for instance, nylons) and polymer additives (for changing polymer characteristics), the addressable market is in excess of $20B annually.

When considered as the end product, LA trades at a considerable higher price than ethanol, the current product of most commercial bio-refineries, and thus can help diversify their product offering and considerably increase their margins.

SBIR Phase II: A computational and experimental platform for the automated design of organisms used in the production of biochemicals Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to develop a platform to rapidly design synthetic organisms to produce biochemicals, which will replace environmentally harmful, ecologically inefficient industrial chemical processes.

The technology developed in this proposal will provide a competitive edge in the rapid engineering of synthetic organisms to produce biochemicals by fermentation that are currently produced from oil (reducing our CO2 emissions) or extracted from natural species (reducing our taxing load on existing ecosystems).

This technology also has the potential to be used for the manufacture of drugs, and to engineer novel organisms to improve crop production and therefore help address the mounting challenges of providing food to a growing world population without tapping too much in Earth's resources.

Commercially, the chemicals that will be enabled by application of the technology developed during the Phase I program open up billion dollar markets that are currently inaccessible to the chemical industry.

This SBIR Phase II project proposes to develop a platform that combines computational enzyme design with systems biology to create a fully integrated system for the design and testing of novel cell factories for the production of bulk and fine chemicals.

During the Phase I project, the company, in collaboration with the University of Washington, has successfully developed a high-performance software code to rapidly design novel metabolic pathways to produce any target chemical from central metabolism.

In Phase II, the company will further advance the concept by (1) developing a high-performance pathway prioritization module to estimate each designed pathway yield and impact on organism metabolism in the context of whole-genome models and (2) use the software platform to design libraries of pathways for the production of a variety of specialty chemical targets that are commercially valuable and not known to be produced by fermentation at scale.

Then, (3) using an experimental screening setup, the DNA for all the proposed pathways will be assembled screened at high-throughput for detectable production of the target chemicals. SBIR Phase II: Spatially Modulated Light For Trapping And Addressing Of Alkaline-Earth Neutral Atom Qubits Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will result from the development of a scalable, universal quantum computing platform.

The range of applications are broad and will expand in parallel with the development of new quantum algorithms, with initial applications including molecular simulations for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, currently limited by the approximations necessary to make calculations tractable for classical computers.

In order to perform these simulations at a scale useful for commercial applications, quantum computing must be significantly scaled. The proposed system will develop a new method to trap and control individual atoms for scaling of quantum computers. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop technology for parallel, high-fidelity single- and multi-qubit gates in neutral atom quantum computers.

The technology will enable neutral atoms as a platform for scalable quantum computing technology with fault-tolerant capabilities. The proposed project includes: 1) development of systems to control atomic qubits in parallel; 2) a methodology to enact high-fidelity gates; and 3) development of necessary infrastructure for a cloud-accessed quantum computer.

With a previously unrealized degree of coherent control to atomic systems, the proposed system will serve as an entirely novel tool to study many-body physics, enabling new quantum simulations of new phases of matter or high-energy physics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

SBIR Phase II: Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer using Multiplex Protein Profiling Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov . The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to improve clinical outcomes and quality-of-life for pancreatic cancer patients.

Only 10% of pancreatic cancer survive five years after diagnosis because most cases are detected at later stages when clinical interventions are relatively ineffective. Earlier detection improves interventions, prevents unnecessary procedures arising from uncertain diagnosis, and leads to health system cost savings.

Roughly 5 million individuals in the US are at higher risk, but there is no screening test available today for earlier stages, a surveillance market estimated at $3 B. This project will develop a diagnostic test for surveillance of people at high risk for developing pancreatic cancer, with methods potentially applicable to other types of cancer and other diseases.

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will advance a technology using a small blood sample to detect the functional state of multiple biological signaling pathways known to participate in cancer inception and progression. This technology can analyze these low abundance proteins at a low cost suitable for a widely adopted surveillance test.

A purpose-built bioinformatic system analyses and compares the bio-signature identified by the assay across many individuals. This Phase II project will optimize the panel of protein targets in the assay to detect high-performing differential bio-signatures for early stages of the disease, and it will enhance the machine-learning-based matching methodology.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. SBIR Phase II: New devices Bioaerosol Sampler for Accurate, Time-Resolved Characterization of Viable Microbes and their Genomes 430 N. College Ave, Ste 430 Fort Collins, CO 80524-2675 Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf.

gov . The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to provide general commercial access to a new generation of affordable, high-efficiency aerosol samplers that will primarily be used in the Industrial Hygiene and Indoor Air Quality market.

The collection technology in these new instruments is unique in that it captures, concentrates and preserves airborne microbes in the same physical state they exist as they are suspended in the air we breathe- a tremendous breakthrough for forensic aerosol analysis.

This work optimizes a novel collection method that chronologically resolves air samples into a portable compact platform, which ensures purity, minimizes handling and is safe for mail. The sample output is delivered in small, sterile medical grade disposable plastics that are compatible with a broad range of users' analytical needs whether it be the military, health care, atmospheric researchers or indoor air quality sector.

This instrumentation is portable, and requires no filters or chemical additions; it rapidly condenses airborne microbes out of ambient air by manipulating humidity, offering a reliable way to assess microbiological air pollution-indoors or out. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to optimize the design of condensation growth-based bioaerosol samplers for commercial validation, rapid manufacture and high-quality reproduction.

The accurate assessment of airborne biological agents remains a tremendous scientific and practical challenge.

The intellectual merit of this work lies in finally overcoming the technical barriers posed by conventional air sampling equipment, which require extensive sampling time and significantly compromises the very information military, medical and building science professionals need: what is the identity, distribution and abundance of airborne microbes.

This team will use the latest forensic genetic sequencing technology to isolate the detection limits of this new collection equipment for common airborne pathogens and allergens. The objective is to validate these new filterless aerosol recovery instruments in controlled laboratory experiments, with a broad range of common pathogenic bioaerosols.

The team will demonstrate how the sample preservation benefits of this technology, can be realized for commercial benefit in monitoring high-density indoor environments, including health care settings and public schools. Operating this new equipment in occupied indoor spaces, we anticipate collecting bioaerosol in excess of forensic detection limits in less than 30 minutes, while maintaining exceptional sample fidelity.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

SBIR Phase II: Plug-and-play intelligent charging hardware and software that increases safety, performance and life of lithium ion and lithium metal batteries Highlands Ranch, CO 80129-2399 Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to enable greater electric vehicle use; furthermore, the technology’s potential to double battery life will reduce the environmental impact of disposed batteries.

This project accelerates electric car adoption by enabling use of 100% of battery operating ranges and maximize usable energy capacity, increasing ongoing driving ranges by 50-100x. This project is a key enabler for expected growth in the global lithium-ion battery market (expected to grow to $68 B by 2022) and the annual hybrid and electric car market (forecast to exceed 10 million vehicles annually by 2025).

This SBIR Phase II project proposes to optimize the technology for battery fast charge and capacity retention targets. Battery performance advancements are most often limited by chemistry and materials improvements to electrodes, electrolytes, or cell structure limiting the trade space (i.e., requiring power vs. energy tradeoffs).

The proposed charging technology and associated software will selectively optimize cell design for various performance metrics by controlling electrode surface phenomena, such as lithium plating and dendrite formation, that otherwise cause permanent capacity loss during normal use and accelerate internal physical processes limiting charge rate.

Technical tasks include: 1) Demonstration of performance improvements to commercial Li-Ion and fabricated Li-metal battery cells; 2) Adaptation of the process from small cells and modules to electric vehicle battery packs; 3) Development of refined sensing and feedback-based control algorithms using Predictive Learning (PL) and Machine Learning (ML) systems; 4) Verification and validation for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and System on a Chip (SoC) formats.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. SBIR Phase II: Ultra-light,modular wind turbine Somerville, MA 02143-0000 Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop an ultra-light, modular wind turbine for use in buoyant airborne wind energy systems. Reduced turbine weight has a cascading effect on total airborne system mass, allowing a significantly smaller, lower cost buoyant structure to be used to access high altitude winds.

At heights up to 2,000 feet winds are strong and consistent, allowing for the production of low-cost, reliable power at a broad array of sites. High altitude winds have over five times the energy potential of ground winds accessed by tower-mounted turbines, opening the potential for a major new renewable energy resource to be harnessed.

In addition, the containerized deployment of airborne wind turbines has the potential to expand wind development to sites that are not feasible today, including sites that are remote or have weak ground-level winds.

Overall, the technology holds the potential to significantly lower energy costs and improve reliability for remote industrial, community, and military customers and represents a major step forward in unlocking the abundant high-altitude wind resource to help in the global pursuit of greater adoption of renewable energy sources. This SBIR Phase II project will focus on reducing the total weight of the wind turbine system.

Turbine weight is one of the most critical cost drivers of buoyant airborne wind energy systems. For each kilogram removed from the turbine, an additional kilogram can be removed from the inflatable shell and tethers, resulting in a significantly smaller and lower cost system. The lightest commercially available small- to medium-sized wind turbine weighs 31.

1 kilograms per kilowatt of capacity, which is too heavy for an economically-viable airborne turbine.

By incorporating a compact, modular architecture, a lightweight permanent magnet direct-drive (PMDD) generator and high-strength composite materials, the proposed Phase II research effort aims to double the power density of traditional medium size turbines, making the proposed system suitable for use in an airborne application, while maintaining a high level of reliability and cost performance.

SBIR Phase II: A complete bioprocess for medicinal plant opioids Menlo Park, CA 94025-5222 Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov . The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to develop a manufacturing platform for opioid medicines.

Opioids enable physicians to provide compassionate care to patients suffering from acute or chronic disease and trauma. The need for opioid analgesics is even more salient for surgeons anticipating the post-operative recovery of their patients and planning for end-of-life care. However, opioids are highly addictive medicines, a property that has been exploited for commercial gain by certain players in the pharmaceutical industry.

The impact of this project will be to deliver a technology that transforms the existing supply chain for opioids by removing the need to grow opium poppy as a drug crop. Instead of sourcing poppy materials from poppy-growing countries, this new technology will allow for complete production of opioids in a secure industrial facility located in the United States where federal agencies can provide oversight and regulation.

Additionally, investment in this technology will enable the development of many more existing and experimental medicines derived from plants, including greatly improved opioids with improved efficacy and safety, and cardiovascular and chemotherapeutic therapies that will extend and enhance human lives. This SBIR Phase II project will develop a bioprocess for opioid active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

To date, the only commercially-competitive method for manufacturing opioids and related alkaloids is to extract these molecules from plants. However, Baker's yeast was recently engineered to biosynthesize opioids, which is a technological advance that could enable opioid production by fermentation.

However, many technical hurdles remain in developing a reliable and cost-effective, commercially-viable production system based on existing strains. The objective of this Phase II project is to provide a complete demonstration and pilot-scale operation of an API bioprocess that is ready for industrial scale up.

The research employs four approaches: 1) Further development of the engineered yeast strains, 2) scale up of fermentation from laboratory scale to pilot scale, 3) optimization of downstream recovery and purification, and 4) evaluation of the resulting products to establish their validity as drop-in-replacements for existing opioid APIs.

The outcome will be a process validated at pilot scale and ready for technology transfer to a secure industrial facility that will make and sell into the opioids API market. This research will replace opium poppies with a modern bioprocess that resembles established, standardized pharmaceutical industry methods for antibiotic and biologic APIs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. SBIR Phase II: Research and development of production-scale high-efficiency Thermal Photovoltaic (TPV) cells to enable ultra-low cost energy storage. Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf.

gov . The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to generate inexpensive, reliable electricity through solar cells. As renewables such as wind and solar provide a new low-cost means of generating power domestically, energy storage systems capable of transforming these intermittent sources into dispatchable ones are increasingly commercially attractive.

However, conventional energy storage technologies, such as advanced batteries, cannot provide the needed resiliency of on the length scale of days. Ultra-low-cost storage technologies, such as those based on thermal energy storage in earth-abundant materials, have the potential to address this large commercial opportunity. The proposed project will advance the development of a new type of heat engine to convert heat into electricity.

The proposed project aims to move this thermophotovoltaic (TPV) heat engine from the lab to the market. The goal of this project is to develop large-scale and high-yield manufacturing of these cells with industrial equipment and large-area substrates. The proposed project will explore the cost-performance trade space toward the goal of high-volume production of PV material.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. SBIR Phase II: Advanced Bioeconomic Forecasting Enabled by Next-Generation Crop Monitoring Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to empower farmers to capture a greater share of revenue from the marketing of their crops. Agriculture is a significant engine to the U.S. economy, and farming itself is vital to creating economically vibrant rural areas.

Farmers are often at a disadvantage when it comes to capturing good prices from their crops because there are significant information asymmetries in the marketing supply chain. We have developed a combination of hardware and analytics that greatly improves crop forecasts at dramatically more accessible prices, which allows farmers and their trusted buyers to make more informed marketing decisions.

Whereas improved agronomy could raise yields by 5-10%, improved marketing could raise revenue >25%, especially for high value crops. In addition to the narrow application of sensing hardware and analytics for forecasting, the data collected by our platform can also be used by growers to make decisions that improve operational performance of complex agribusinesses and improve the agronomy of the farm.

These tools make it easier to compare performance of crops to improve yields and reduce resource costs. Together this technology continues to raise productivity and profitability per farmer. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project integrates a completely novel plant and weather sensing platform with analytics that synthesizes data into actionable forms that can drive agribusiness decisions.

We have bundled a suite of capabilities into a single hardware unit that includes sensing, communications, GPS, mounting, and solar power, which dramatically reduces the cost and increases the simplicity of collecting agricultural data. These data are uniquely designed to monitor crop performance and its sensitivity to weather and management.

Data synthesis is a critical pain point in transforming raw numbers into insights for growers to act upon. By creating an integrated hardware platform, the data is poised to provide useful advice that allow a farmer to act on emerging situations, anticipate upcoming events, and even predict the future.

Our research objective here will be to generate probabilistic forecasts that use the unique data from our hardware to estimate key crop growth parameters and project forward for an operational yield forecast.

This coupling between highly informative quantitative in-field data and sophisticated parameter estimation and forecast techniques could dramatically improve marketing decisions and help farmers capture better prices for their products. SBIR Phase II: High-Throughput Agile Robotic Manufacturing System for Tile Mosaics Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov .

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will demonstrate a prototype of a high-throughput, agile, low-cost manufacturing system for tile mosaics. Mosaics have been a source of visual splendor for millennia, but they have always required arduous and painstaking hand assembly.

Our Phase I proved the feasibility of a programmable, high-throughput robotic tile-assembly system to enhance the production of mosaic tilings. Phase II R&D will build upon Phase I success to further speed up, automate and scale the system, develop an effective agile manufacturing management system, and analyze the economic viability of robotic mosaic assembly for Phase III.

We will accomplish this by enhancing the mechanical processes and reducing operator time - in addition to developing a productionflow information system. After Phase II system optimization, we will evaluate the commercial potential of the Artaic technology. The anticipated technical result will be providing a 5x faster manufacturing process with a 75% reduction in the price per square foot of customizable mosaic tilings produced.

The intellectual merits of this SBIR project involve Artaic? s disruptive robotic technology, which transforms mosaic installation from its current, time-consuming manual labor processes to a rapid, robotically directed customizable process.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project expands the utilization of artisanal mosaic work while increasing the competitive advantage of U.S. manufacturing processes through increased automation and customization.

Successful development of this technology will enable a breakthrough pricing structure that is 75% lower than the competition (based on manual and rudimentary automated processes), leading to broad market affordability and widespread commercial adoption. Our robotic system has the potential to revolutionize the $76B global tile industry, while creating numerous domestic job opportunities.

Artaic expects that the 5x increase in manufacturing speed realized during Phase I will be maintained in Phase II during manufacturing scale-up without loss of placement accuracy.

The increased understanding of robotic agile manufacturing-enabled mass customization processes will expand the scientific understanding of related robotic processes that utilize highthroughput flexible assemblies, such as for medical or pharmaceutical technologies, or for consumer products.

In addition, classical mosaic techniques will become more accessible as an art form to all students, while undergraduate students will increase their understanding of STEM concepts through engineering courses utilizing this technology. Artists and designers will find the realization of their design work much more practical and affordable as a business enterprise.

SBIR Phase II: Computer-Aided Mosaic Design and Construction Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf. gov . This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a computer-aided mosaic design and robotic assembly system for automation of a centuries-old manual process.

Despite their prominence in art and architecture, mosaics are arduous to design and assemble. Labor-intensive methods have stubbornly resisted automation, adding considerable cost and delay to projects.

Artaic's Phase I research proved feasibility of computer-aided design software to create renderings and digital blueprints of artisanal mosaics by introducing a streamlined, procedural workflow for tile layout that closely mimicked the workflow of mosaic artists, and did so over 10x faster than manual methods.

The goal of the Phase II research is to demonstrate the speed, effectiveness, utility, and artistic quality of this mosaic design and robotic assembly system.

The key Phase II objectives are to: (1) demonstrate a prototype artisanal mosaic design system and; (2) demonstrate a robotic mosaic production system, that will be: (3) validated for accuracy, speed, and quality through user assessment, and; (4) evaluated for economic and commercial potential.

Anticipated technical results will enable a revolutionary advancement from manual to automated processes in mosaic design and production, comparable to the displacement of film by digital camera technology. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project lies in art, design, construction, and architecture.

Software and robotic automation will lower the cost of mosaics and increase its traditional societal impact of adorning public, commercial, and residential spaces. Artists, designers, and builders will have a significantly faster method to produce artisanal mosaics without the high cost and time associated with manual design and production.

The efficiencies made possible by this proposed computer-aided mosaic design and manufacturing system will enable Artaic to expand into the global multi-billion dollar tile market and develop a domestic workforce to compete against global manufacturers of handcrafted mosaic artwork. Additionally, the computational demands of the rendering algorithms developed during Phase II will give