Applied Perception Named Recipient of Prestigious 2006 Tibbetts Award
- Government-wide award recognizes small businesses for significant achievements involving technological innovation related to the federal SBIR Program.
- Applied Perception among 56 organizations selected from an initial field of approximately 17,000 projects
- Award is the second for Applied Perception’s work on the Robotic Patient Recovery SBIR project for the U.S. Army.
Applied Perception, Inc. (API), a Pittsburgh-based company that develops and licenses robotics-related technologies to market-leading companies in the fields of defense, transportation, and agriculture, today announced it was named a recipient of the 2006 Tibbetts Award, which recognizes significant achievements involving technological innovation related to the federal Small Business Innovation Research Program. Recipients selected for the Tibbetts Award are recognized as having provided outstanding SBIR leadership in the state, region or the nation. The award will be presented today in a ceremony in Washington D.C. to Todd Jochem, Ph.D., founder and president of API, and will be followed by a reception on Capitol Hill.
API was one of 56 organizations nationally (two from Pennsylvania) selected from an initial field of approximately 17,000 Phase I projects that were eligible for the award since it was last given in 2002.
This award recognizes API’s work on the Phase II SBIR project entitled “A Robotic System for Wounded Patient Extraction and Evacuation from Hostile Environments.” During this project, API developed a prototype of a complete robotic system – unmanned vehicles, advanced navigation technology, operator controls, and payloads – to support battlefield medics in finding injured soldiers and safely and quickly moving them to medical care facilities in the field. Lead funding and technical guidance for the project was provided by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, with additional support from U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center; the Office of the Secretary of Defense Joint Robotics Program; and the National Center for Defense Robotics.
“We are thrilled to have been selected for this prestigious award against such a deep pool of innovative projects across all government departments and agencies,” commented Dr. Jochem. “We have worked extremely hard not only to meet the requirements of this project, but also to leverage the government’s investment into other military and commercial projects and products.”
The central theme of the Tibbetts Award is to emphasize those accomplishments where economic results are directly traceable to SBIR funding and significant and definable outcomes are demonstrated. “Economically, this project has been one of the driving forces of API’s growth and we will continue to leverage this work as we move forward,” Dr. Jochem added. “Over the next several months, we plan to look for strategic relationships that will enable us to continue to capitalize on the technology and expertise we have developed and identify opportunities to more quickly move this technology to deployment than we could do alone.”
“The Small Business Innovation Research Program is an important federal initiative that promotes the kind of technological innovation that’s essential for the United States to maintain our competitive edge in the global economy of the future,” Congressman Doyle said today. “It’s an outstanding program, so the fact that Applied Perception was selected from among 17,000 eligible SBIR projects speaks volumes about just how impressive Applied Perception’s work in the field of robotics is.”
“The National Center for Defense Robotics (NCDR) is pleased to have contributed to a project that has earned such a prestigious award,” commented Bill Thomasmeyer, President of the NCDR. “This recognition of the outstanding work done by API is further affirmation of the increasingly important role that robotics will play in the military and indicative of the increasing role that companies based in western Pennsylvania will have in transitioning such technology from the laboratories to the battlefield.”
This award comes shortly after API’s receipt of the Army’s 2006 SBIR Quality Award for the same project.
