Eric Greene Associates, Inc.

Eric Greene Associates is teaming with Tocreo Labs to develop new technology for military and commercial markets.  Tocreo Labs was founded by Mark Krawczewicz, who has over 20 years of experience with the National Security Agency developing secure electronic systems.  Tocreo's expertise in Electrical Engineering combined with the Marine Engineering and Materials background of Eric Greene Associates has enabled us to develop innovative solutions to some of today's most challenging problems.  The focus of the collaboration is on energy and security systems that cover a diverse array of engineering and manufacturing disciplines.

We are proposing a reusable Smartcard Boarding Pass for airline passengers to eliminate wasted paper while improving convenience and security.   As conceived, flight information will be downloaded by passengers via personal computers to a Smartcard.  The card’s active pixel display will show a 2-D barcode only when energized at the airport terminal.  The Smartcard Boarding Pass will use a 7816 contact interface to communicate back and forth with airport terminals.  This two-way electrical interface is required to activate the barcode display using advanced encryption algorithms.  The same encryption technology will ensure that any biometric data stored on the card can’t be compromised.

Although Smartcards have been around since 1970 and have been considered for web-based airline ticketing since 2001, recent advances in thin film active displays and advanced Smartcard circuitry have only now made it possible to consider a secure, reusable Smartcard Boarding Pass that is affordable and can be supported with the current air transportation infrastructure.

According to federal data cited by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate aviation subcommittee, sleepy and overworked pilots have been linked to 20 air carrier accidents from 1989 to 2008, resulting in 273 fatalities.  We are proposing an unobtrusive health monitoring sensor suite that will alert pilots of fatigue onset.

The Pilot Alertness Monitor (PAM) will continuously measure physiological data and update a graphic display only when information changes according to programmable thresholds.  PAM will issue an audible warning signal when a state of drowsiness is detected.

Commercial airline pilots are positively identified through multiple security layers and mechanisms at US airports. This is not the case for general aviation (GA) pilots, creating a vulnerability this research addresses.

The solution to positively identify GA pilots is significantly more challenging then commercial pilots for the following reasons:

1.       There are 5000 paved (14,000 total) GA airports in the US compared to 376 commercial airports, making it unfeasible and to implement a common physical security solution to verify GA pilots.

2.       Most technically-based strong authentication solutions are cost prohibitive to mandate and retrofit into every GA airplane in the US.

We propose using the existing Transponder (Transmitter / Responder) and encoder architecture and hardware to multiplex another field to the altitude / squawk codes sent to air traffic controllers. A unique ID code will be issued to each GA pilot to be encrypted and then “unlocked” with circuitry within a smartcard. The controller can request the pilots ID code to positively match the pilot to the aircraft.

The U.S. Navy and other ship operators would benefit greatly if they had a better understanding of vessel structural health.  Recent operational trends have moved toward faster vessels built with reduced scantlings, which has been made possible by our ability to better analyze ship structure with finite element analysis.  We are also trying to extend the service life of these ships.  A reliable structural health monitoring (SHM) system that is inexpensive enough to be ubiquitous throughout the ship will provide ship owners and operators historical and real time information on the stress state throughout the vessel, thus greatly improving ship safety and increasing her operational envelop.

To date, “hard-wire” mechanical strain gauges have been used to measure strain in complex engineering structures, such as ships, submarines and other weapon systems.  The cabling installation and support costs plus the need to supply power to these sensors has limited their use to dedicated surveys.  An autonomous SHM system that utilizes energy harvested from the structure itself is now possible as the power requirements of micro-electronic mechanical systems (MEMS) have declined drastically.

Our Distributed Autonomous Network of Ship Structural Strain Sensors (DANS⁴) will be a very powerful yet low-cost SHM system.  Sensor suites will be manufactured on thin-film substrates designed to be mounted directly on ship structure.  The sensors will communicate wirelessly to a central hub located in each compartment.  These hubs will then be connected using the ship’s standard communications network.  This distributed network system will have the ability to perform complex data algorithms at the nodes, hubs and central processor, which will greatly reduce data transmission requirements.

The DANS⁴ will serve as a long-term SHM to trend data and also have the ability for detailed damage detection using impedance-based analysis.  Piezoelectric strain gauges will form the backbone of the sensor suite in order to provide strain data without the need to run cabling to each gauge for supply current.  The sensor nodes will also incorporate accelerometers, temperature and humidity gauges to help diagnose the cause of structural failures and to support damage control assessment.