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2024 SMALL BUSINESS WEEK SPOTLIGHT!

In 2023, EDGE partnered with ANDRO Computational Solutions to pursue and win a FuzeHub Manufacturing Grant through its Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund. This grant enabled ANDRO to conduct a pilot of “2ndNet”―a wireless rapid alert and intelligent emergency management system for mitigating active threats in schools and public spaces. 2ndNet is anticipated to demonstrate an unparalleled breakthrough in rapid alert/response to save lives, and EDGE is proud to have facilitated this type of critical research and development here in the Mohawk Valley. In addition to sponsoring ANDRO for this grant opportunity, EDGE served as grant administrator and shepherded this project through to completion, culminating in a successful pilot.

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The ribbon-cutting ceremony marked not just the inauguration of ANDRO’s new facility within the Griffiss Business & Technology Park but also symbolized the company’s ongoing commitment to innovation and excellence in the fields of defense research and commercial industry applications.

The event included esteemed representatives from the Rome Area Chamber of Commerce and the honorable Mayor Jeff Lanigan, who all joined forces to celebrate this significant milestone. The relocation to Griffiss Park, a hub for technology and development, in the previous year, was lauded as a strategic move that would further bolster ANDRO’s research, engineering, and technical services prowess.

Since its inception in 1994, ANDRO Computational Solutions has carved a niche for itself by leading the charge in advanced spectrum exploitation, secure wireless communications, software-based waveform development, cognitive software-defined radio networking, multi-sensor data fusion, and sensor resource management. The new facility promises to be a beacon of innovation, offering enhanced capabilities and fostering collaborations that will push the boundaries of what is possible in secure communications and defense technologies. The ribbon-cutting ceremony not only celebrated ANDRO’s past achievements and current endeavors but also looked forward to the future, where the company continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the technological landscape.

ROME, NY — The U.S. Navy has awarded ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC of Rome a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with a base value of $1.3 million plus additional funded options, to develop a new type of autonomous radio frequency signal intelligence (RF-SIGINT) capability for uncrewed air system (UAS) platforms or aerial drones, called RANGER ― Robust Autonomy for NeGation of Enemy Radar.  The work will be performed by ANDRO’s Marconi-Rosenblatt Artificial Intelligence Innovation Lab team in Rome led by Dr. Jithin Jagannath, Lab Director and Chief Scientist – Technology Sector.

The RANGER award builds upon an earlier investment by the Navy of almost $1.5 million for ANDRO’s D-MARVEL system, a complement to RANGER, for a total funding amount to ANDRO approaching $3 million to advance UAS autonomy goals.  RANGER and D-MARVEL both provide for next-generation machine learning (ML)-based UAS platforms that can autonomously perform a variety of tasks and conduct missions in diverse environments with little-to-no human intervention.   RANGER focuses on RF-SIGINT applications whereas D-MARVEL leverages human visual cues with artificial intelligence (AI) for human-machine teaming performance.

For RANGER, the ANDRO AI Lab team will apply novel ML techniques for enhancing radar detection and classification and will integrate the low cost, small-form-factor payload with small UAS host platforms.  RANGER represents the government’s focused investment in the development and deployment of lightweight, next-generation RF-SIGINT payloads for use in small military drones.

According to Jagannath, RANGER’s overarching goal is to bolster Manned-UnManned Teaming (MUM-T) to provide superior battlefield agility and improve platform survivability.  The design, integration, and flight testing of RANGER on UAS hardware is spearheaded by ANDRO engineers Sean Furman and Tyler Gwin with guidance by Anu Jagannath, Associate Director of ANDRO’s AI Lab and the company’s machine learning-enabled SIGINT subject matter expert.

ANDRO president Dr. Andrew Drozd explains that the impetus for human-machine teaming is driven by the need to migrate from a UAS platform that is strictly controlled by a human operator who must orchestrate its flight to effectively achieve a particular mission objective―representing a human-in-the-loop approach.  Rather, Jagannath and his team are focused on an end-to-end, human-on-the-loop framework that leverages specialized machine learning techniques to provide autonomy, adaptability, and highly effective human-machine teaming performance based on experiments recently conducted at ANDRO’s lab facilities.

Jagannath stated, “The RANGER technology sits at the intersection of ANDRO’s Marconi-Rosenblatt Lab expertise in UAS autonomy and efficient machine learning-enabled signal intelligence.  The AI lab team sees RANGER as the next-generation autonomous MUM-T planning and coordination system that will be engineered for operation in dynamic and austere application environments.”

Drozd anticipates growth in business arising from the work to incorporate the solution into advanced UAS platforms during the next phases of advanced research and development.  “RANGER is at the core of ANDRO’s strategic plan to continue to expand the company’s research portfolio and footprint, including the research activities of the Marconi-Rosenblatt AI Innovation Lab,” said Drozd.

ANDRO is a privately owned company established in 1994 focused on scientific research, development, and the application of advanced computer software in the domains of radio frequency spectrum exploitation, secure wireless communications, cognitive radios, advanced radar data fusion, and sensor resource management.  Visit www.androcs.com for more information.

Dr. Andy Drozd, President of ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC, and Corporate Advisory Board Member, Bob Bojanek, have been invited to judge at the upcoming New York Business PLan Competition (NYBPC).

The New York Business Plan Competition (NYBPC) project is designed for students to encourage the development of greater entrepreneurial capacity in New York State. SUNY Poly is the regional host for the Mohawk Valley. The competition is open to all students from all universities in our MV region, all disciplines, and all levels–both undergraduate and graduate. Students are encouraged to form diverse teams and collectively have fun developing their ideas. The competition gives students the opportunity to bring concepts for new useful and inventive technologies, processes, services, and organizations to life. Students do not need a background in business to join forces with others and enter the competition. Cross-disciplinary teams are encouraged.

During the day of the competition (Friday, April 5, 2024), student teams pitch their venture concepts in thematic tracks to judges who then give them feedback and rubric-based evaluations. The tracks are as follows: Food & Agtech; Health & Wellbeing; Learn, Work & Live; Safety, Power & Mobility; Products & Hardware; and Software & Services. Past student participants have remarked that the competition benefited them in several ways including becoming more capable through experiential learning, being nudged to finally develop their dream ideas for helping others, getting valuable feedback from expert judges, being recognized and awarded with cash prizes, and having the chance to get funding for their exciting new ventures.

As an update for NYBPC MV, graduate students from the SUNY Upstate Innovation & Entrepreneurship group have expressed interest in partnering with other students who have complementary skills for our upcoming competition. Here is a description of the SUNY Upstate students and their interest areas:

The SUNY Upstate Innovation & Entrepreneurship student organization is a space for medical students and other students entering health professions to explore the intersection of business and medicine. Our goal is to offer local biomedical start-ups our expertise in science and medicine to help advance these businesses in any way our role as consultants within this sphere can contribute. While our student organization may have teams enter the competition on their own, we also have students who may be interested in serving as consultants to other teams, should their project ideas relate to science, medicine, health, and wellness. 

For more information, visit: New York Business Plan Competition (nybpc.org)

ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC is a proud sponsor and exhibitor for the upcoming IEEE DySpan Symposium, held May 13-16, 2024 in Washington, D.C. The IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks will break new ground in spectrum access by uniting industry experts, academics, and innovative minds from across the globe. This symposium serves as a platform for pioneering advancements and collaboration in the radio frequency spectrum realm. Brace yourself for engaging presentations, illuminating discussions, and networking opportunities unlike any before. Let’s step into the future of spectrum technology together!

DySPAN 2024 will be co-located with National Science Foundation (NSF) Spectrum Week 2024, which will include SWIFT and NRDZ PI meetings, SpectrumX center meeting, National Spectrum Managers Association (NSMA) annual conference, and a WSRD R&D workshop related to the National Spectrum Strategy.

If you are a SWIFT or NRDZ PI, or if you interested in joining any of the NSF Spectrum Week 2024 programming during DySPAN, you will be given an option to add NSF Spectrum Week 2024 access to your DySPAN registration during checkout. The additional fee is a nominal $20.

If you are interested in attending the WSRD R&D Workshop on Friday, you will be given an option to add WSRD R&D Workshop access to your DySPAN registration during checkout. The additional fee is a nominal $10.

For more information, visit: 2024 IEEE DySPAN | IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks | 13–16 May 2024 // Washington, DC (ieee-dyspan.org)

Dr. Jithin Jagannath, Founding Director of ANDRO’s Marconi-Rosenblatt AI Innovation Lab, has been invited to speak at the 2024 AAAI Spring Series Symposium, highlighting Federated Learning on the Edge. The symposium will take place March 25-27, 2024 at Stanford University.

Computational intelligence bears the prospect of a trendsetting technology able to unlock solutions to previously difficult and large-scale problems outside of the current cloud-centric paradigm. In the following decades, intelligent agents trained in the cloud using machine learning algorithms on large amounts of data will be deployed in the real world. Under the requirements of dynamic applications, AI agents sharing a common goal will be designed on the fly. Therefore, real-time interactions between AI agents will be necessary to solve complex distributed problems where massive connectivity, large data volumes, and ultra-low latency are beyond those offered by 5G networks and beyond. To harness the true power of such agents, Federated Learning on the Edge is the key.

Federated Learning (FL) has recently emerged as a standard distributed machine learning computational paradigm to meet these needs by enabling coordination and cooperation among such agents on the Edge. FL was initially proposed for text recommendation on mobile phones to improve the communication efficiency of devices, i.e., by not sending their data to a central repository. However, FL has witnessed vast applicability across many disciplines, especially in healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. Since FL allows data to remain at the source, sources only need to share their locally trained model parameters. By preserving data locality, FL can reduce the data security and privacy risks associated with aggregating data in a single location.

Through this symposium, they will create a collaborative platform to address open issues frequently observed in FL on the Edge. Edge devices in a FL environment may experience computational power, memory capacity, and/or communication bandwidth limitations. Participating devices may have heterogeneous hardware equipment or be powered by small-capacity batteries, leading to network disconnections and packet drops. These challenges require novel algorithmic approaches and system solutions that can facilitate the deployment of FL in such resource-constrained computational environments. Considering the resource-intensive requirements of developing different security and privacy protocols on edge, providing solutions from a theoretical and practical point of view makes these challenges particularly attractive. 

View the full lineup of guest speakers here: Federated Learning on the Edge – Speakers (google.com)