GRAND FORKS (AP) - The University of North Dakota has been awarded a $457,985 federal grant for unmanned aerial vehicle research.

Richard Schultz, associate professor and chair of Electrical Engineering at UND, will head the three-year project, titled "Real-Time Super-Resolution Automatic Target Recognition of UAV-Based Reconnaissance and Surveillance Imagery."

The project is dedicated to image processing and analysis, to develop clear resolution in videos captured by UAVs, the Defense Department said.

The Defense Department said it would award $11.5 million to 22 academic institutions in 17 states, to perform research in science and engineering fields important to national defense.

Twenty-five projects were selected to receive the money. The average award is about $460,000.