The University Research Foundation, under the leadership of Dr. Norris Krone, its President, provides unique technical expertise across a broad range of research, development and technical support programs. URF is incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation and was established by the University of Maryland in 1981 to conduct proprietary programs over a wide range of cutting-edge technologies.
URF has developed unique technical capabilities that are used to transition ideas from laboratory concepts to marketable products. These same capabilities also provide the technical expertise needed to help our sponsors and clients remain at the forefront of advanced, state of the art, technologies. URF employees have been the authors of nearly 200 technical papers and nearly two dozen patents.
Electro-optic accomplishments include the development of a vehicle mounted sniper detection system, an amphibious assault threat locator system, special test equipment to determine in a laboratory the effectiveness of flare countermeasures against air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, and a computer simulation to evaluate the performance of missile attack warning systems.
URF's Maryland Advanced Development Laboratory (MADL) Division has been a leader in developing advanced avionics concepts for commercial aviation for over a decade. Accomplishments is this area include the devolvement of an enhanced vision system, a synthetic vision system, a computerized co-pilot, a low cost head-up display (HUD), and an advanced data fusion processor (ADFP) used to receive, distribute, and manage data from various equipment.
We own and operate three general aviation test aircraft located at the Fort Meade (Tipton) Airport. These aircraft are configured as needed for flight experimentation. These aircraft have been used for missile emulation, Navy Shipboard Countermeasure tests, missile seeker testing, electro-optic tests, advanced data links, flight performance / Human factors evaluation, environmental sampling, and several avionics development projects.
A coveted Flight International Aerospace Industry Award (for Advancements in Air Transport Operations) was presented to a partnership of MADL and Northwest Airlines in 1994. The award was for the MADL flight program to develop and evaluate the Enhanced Vision System that uses fog penetrating imaging sensors to provide a real image of an airport environment on a head-up display for landing.
