Augusta Systems Awarded $1.8M Army Contract
Company Will Assist with Vehicle Sensor Systems

Morgantown, W.Va. -- Augusta Systems, a provider of technologies to reduce deployment and management costs of sensor systems, networks and applications, was awarded a $1.8 million contract to assist the U.S. Army Benét Laboratories with the development of vehicle sensor systems utilizing microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies for weapon system operations and maintenance (O&M). The sensor systems would allow the military to more efficiently monitor and manage wear-and-tear on vehicles, large gun barrels and other weapons.

“A major challenge facing the military is operation and maintenance costs associated with aging vehicle and weapon systems,” said Patrick Esposito II, president and chief operating officer of Augusta Systems. “Through the use of sensor systems that leverage MEMS and RFID technologies, we can help the military to obtain more accurate and timely information on exactly when and where weapon system maintenance is needed. This condition-based maintenance could significantly reduce O&M costs as well as increase the safety of military personnel.”

While monitoring systems have been developed for specific vehicle and weapon subsystems (such as engine, transmission or structural subsystems), the life of each subsystem is limited to the lifespan of its individual component parts – an area where monitoring has proved difficult.

Through the contract with Benét Laboratories, a division of the Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center, Augusta Systems will assist the Army in developing sensor systems that remotely record changes in individual weapon system components, which could lead to earlier identification of weapon system health issues, and, more significantly, to more accurate tracking of the remaining lifespan for specific component parts.

“As vehicle and weapon systems age, O&M costs could skyrocket. Our technologies, for remotely monitoring the health of each individual component part, could be a crucial tool for keeping these important weapon systems in service and keeping maintenance costs in check,” Esposito said.

Subcontractors to Augusta Systems on the effort include American Science and Technology Corporation, Batcheller Consulting Group and South Dakota State University.

About Augusta Systems:
Augusta Systems, Inc. (Augusta Systems™) provides technologies to engineers and software developers to reduce deployment and management costs of sensor systems, networks and applications. These technologies enable the most efficient and effective use and convergence of sensor data to assist business, industry and government with managing the data overload resulting from wide-scale sensor deployments for security, monitoring and asset tracking.

The company’s flagship technology is SensorBridge™, a development platform for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, featuring authoring tools and run-time components, that powers rapid integration of diverse sensor data into existing systems, streamlines development of new sensor systems and applications and enables flexible management of sensor systems and networks. Other products include sensor processing and aggregation technologies, which provide processing, aggregation and transmission of sensor data in mobile, remote and stationary applications. These technologies enable sensors and sensor networks, wireless sensors and wireless sensor networks (including ZigBee), RFID systems, IPv6 and netcentric systems, physical/IT security convergence and more.