Draper's Inertial Measurement capability enables guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) systems and instruments that do not rely on any external references for navigation. For high accuracy in harsh environments, Draper's inertial design and development work includes the strapdown and gimballed systems used in land, sea, air and space systems. Draper designs instruments and sensors in a variety of technologies—mechanical, optical and micro-optical, MEMS, atom-based—to meet customers' performance, cost and size goals across a wide range of environments for applications ranging from strategic military platforms to squad-level systems to commercial systems.

Draper develops enabling guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) system solutions that provide our customers with needed mission capability in both defense and civil applications. Combining deep expertise in precision instrumentation, fault-tolerant electronics and advanced GN&C/autonomy software, Draper innovates integrated solutions for our sponsors' most challenging missions, including global strike, hypersonic/re-entry applications, gun-launched systems, rendezvous and proximity operations, as well as miniaturized solutions for autonomous systems in challenging environments:the contested spectrum battlefield, GPS-unavailable environments, harsh radiation and more. Technologies Draper is advancing in this domain include vision-aided GN&C, celestial navigation, multi-sensor data fusion, advanced sensing and instruments, multi-agent collaborative GN&C/autonomy and more.

To sense, monitor and control an environment, Draper designs and develops devices with precision electronics to collect and process data in a variety of formats, fusing data in heterogeneous formats. Timing devices to perform precision time transfer (e.g., portable atomic clocks) to support communications, imaging and rangefinding technology using innovative optics and photonics, and quantum sensors—Draper can combine technologies in creative ways to provide needed performance, even while reducing size, weight and power. Draper is enabling new, SWaP-constrained solutions in challenging environments (e.g., GPS-challenged).

Draper's systems engineering approach enables design, development and test of complex, dynamic, High Assurance Systems (HAS) that are safe, reliable, resilient and secure in their intended operational environments. Draper integrates its unique variety of specialty engineering capabilities—spanning fault-tolerant system design, reliability engineering, radiation tolerance and hardening, safety and security, among others—into HAS design. Our continuous investments in digital engineering enable simulations, analyses and testing across the full development lifecycle, allowing our deep pool of engineering talent to produce world-class solutions for the challenges faced by HAS owners and their ultimate goal of assuring mission outcomes.

To enable systems to perform despite the effects of extreme environments, Draper draws on decades of experience designing for harsh operating conditions. Specialized hardware, algorithms and software are integrated into systems that are robust and resilient in challenging conditions. They enable not only performance but survivability and recovery from adverse events and circumstances when exposed to radiation, temperature extremes, high pressure, corrosive conditions,shock, vibration and more. In addition to high-fidelity models and simulations of challenging environments, Draper has facilities to test prototypes under a variety of difficult conditions. Draper's design expertise delivers reliable technology.

Working within challenging system requirements for size, weight and power—while meeting customer performance standards—Draper designs low-SWaP complex systems and components. Miniaturizing through a systems approach, Draper engineers take into account the many facets of a system: custom digital and analog electronics, customASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) and communication technologies, MEMS and other sensors, novel power sources and ultra-compact packaging technologies. Draper combines these technologies to meet the unique needs of customers, military or commercial. Draper can insert enhanced functionality into existing technology or design something new, such as medical devices (pediatric heart valves or neural stimulation electronics or sensors).

To provide end-to-end communications solutions, Draper creates mission-specific system architecture designs for various domains, including undersea and space. Draper's technology expertise includes radio frequency (RF) hardware design and implementation, software-defined radio (SDR)-based solutions and custom signal processing. Draper develops RF-based systems for electronic warfare (EW), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), satellite communications and counter-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) applications—among other uses.

Draper's substantial experience designing cyber-physical systems benefits not only the performance of these systems, it also informs the approach Draper engineers take in designing security into them. Draper engineers use their insight into the nature of vulnerabilities to protect systems through secure development of their software and hardware. Draper's approach is comprehensive, employing state-of-the-art applied security research leveraging formal methods, network and system security, advanced packaging, secure processors and offensive cyber security. Custom microelectronics with extensive security provisions are coupled with secure software development along with strong cryptography to achieve secure and assured systems.

Human-centered engineering creates solutions to optimize human performance and stretch human capabilities. Identifying and baselining user needs early drives design and shapes adaptive systems to detect, identify and respond to human signals effectively and efficiently. UI/UX design optimizes the interface and interaction between human and system, ensuring mission goals are readily achievable. Human-system performance testing and analysis conducted throughout development evaluate the operational impact of solutions, ensuring systems optimize situation awareness and decision making for all users. This expertise enables Draper to develop new tools and methods for human-signals understanding within a complex, dynamic surround,where actionable information is key to success.

Within the context of specific domain applications, Draper-designed systems collect and fuse data in real time and apply analytics techniques to extract meaningful information from processed data sets to give users better understanding of complex, dynamic processes. Draper can fuse data from diverse and heterogeneous sources, including imagery, video, audio, social media, and others, and automate analysis of large data sets with algorithms. Optimized coupling of data acquisition and machine learning-based analysis enables ability to glean insight during operations and exploit it in real time.

Draper is a leader in the design, development, integration and test of algorithms and software for autonomous systems. We have developed reusable autonomy architectures that enable full mission autonomy for single-and multi-agent applications across a number of complex domains:underwater, terrestrial, aerial and space. Our reusable frameworks are implemented within a digital engineering environment,which ensures new mission capability can be developed and tested quickly and robustly. Our design principles take into account human-machine interaction, enabling the development of operator-trusted technology for national security, civil and commercial uses.

Draper designs and develops electromechanical systems, delivering solutions for air, ground, and undersea applications leveraging robotics, articulated systems, and novel structures. Whether designing from scratch or adapting commercial technology, Draper has a full complement of fabrication facilities, including world-class machining and micromachining, additive manufacturing of polymers and metals, wafer-level processing, and a comprehensive electronics assembly facility. Draper also works with advanced materials, including development and integration of biomaterials, chemical and electrochemical materials, and exotic structural materials, as needed. By combining complex design with advanced analyses, and informed by manufacturing expertise, systems are delivered for real-world applications in harsh environments.

Draper uses microfluidics, cell and molecular biology, and complex instrumentation to design biological systems and develop prototype technologies compatible with a wide range of biological materials,ranging in size scale from the molecular level up to the cell and tissue level. Drawing on its knowledge of immunology and microfluidics, Draper designs and develops manufacturing tools for cellular therapies. Draper engineers new capabilities by seamlessly integrating novel biological systems with custom hardware for a wide range of applications, including controlled DNA synthesis, cellular therapy manufacturing, detection, diagnostics, high-throughput R&D and therapeutic screening.

Using a custom-designed multiplexed dynamic tissue culture platform and organ tissue models on chips, Draper offers customers a high-throughput, tunable organ-on-chip (OOC) microenvironment that can generate physiologically relevant responses in human organ tissue models to accelerate drug discovery, toxicity screening and efficacy testing for therapeutics and vaccines. The PREDICT96 platform has an instrumented microfluidic culture plate (MCP) in the standard 384-well plate footprint that supports 96 individual OOCs or arrayed multi-organ systems simultaneously, with sensors to monitor individual OOCs. Biologists and engineers work together seamlessly to expand the capabilities of the platform, including real-time sensing, high-resolution imaging and data analytics.