TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Ground/Sea Vehicles, Materials/Processes

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 3.5.b.(7) of the solicitation.

OBJECTIVE: Develop and implement innovative technologies that will provide autonomous self-repair and maintenance on unmanned vehicles and reduced-manpower ships.

DESCRIPTION: Congress has mandated that, "It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned; and by 2015, one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned." (Section 220 of the FY2001 defense authorization act, H.R. 4205/P.L. 106-398 of October 30, 2000. Similar trends are underway for the provision of naval capabilitities on presently unprecedented levels using unmanned surface and undersea vessels. In parallel, pursuit of reduced life-cycle costs for manned naval platforms has led to a greater and greater call for automation and reduced manning for new designs.

Current limitations on UV operations are largely driven by fuel and battery capacitities, but advances in propulsion and power technologies are coming on line that will mitigate that shortcoming to a considerable degree. As these technologies evolve, the next operationally limiting factor will become maintenance requirements of the vehicle systems. Similarly, a large driver of crew workload on manned vessels is the need to perform scheduled and unscheduled maintenance tasks while underway.

The frequency of routine maintenace tasks such as clearing strainers and changing filters can usually be reduced by clever system design, but seldom eliminated entirely, and usually at increased system acquisiton cost. Similarly, reducing the frequency and necessity of unscheduled maintenance tasks can often be accomplished by adding redundancy to systems, albeit with added system weight and drastically increased cost. In order to maintain sufficiently large payload fractions while minimizing system acquisition cost, approaches to perform scheduled and unscheduled maintenance tasks using robotic technologies combined with autonomous control schema are sought. An example of the sort of unscheduled maintenance or casualty repair task to be performed would be the isolation, removal, replacement, and recharging of a fuel sytem after the identification of a faulty valve component.

This topic seeks to identify innovative scientific and engineering solutions to provide autonomous self-repair and maintenance of UVs and low-manpower ships. Robotics; intelligent autonomous control, failure sensing, identification, and isolation; parts handling; coordination with mission and ship system schedules; and other technologies will likely need to be addressed by proposed solutions. Existing technologies should be leveraged as much as possible to reduce risk, but technologies must be able to operate for long periods (months to years) without human intervention. Technical challenges lie in robotics, intelligent autonomous control and coordination, failure sensing and identification, and long periods of unattended operation.

Approaches to automation of maintenance tasks are considered to be key enablers to the pursuit of economically viable very long endurance unmanned vehicle operation and grossly reduced manning of larger ships. Maintenance is usually conducted by ship's force while deployed, but If UVs are to be deployed for extended periods, some maintenance will have to be done autonomoulsy without the intervention of manpower, particulary as unmanned operation moves to larger vessels. Proposals should specifically describe the technologies that will be applied to solve the problem, how they will be developed, what the specific benefit will be, and how they might be transitioned to Navy acquisition programs. System life-cyle cost estimates with sufficient detail to determine impact on acquisition and sustainment must be developed as part of the effort. Members of the Naval Advanced Concepts and Technologies (NACT) program are available to provide guidance and assistance in the identification and clarification of common issues and needs. Contact with these resources is encouraged both prior to proposal development and during any subsequent SBIR-related activity.

PHASE I: The contractor is expected to identify and characterize innovative scientific and engineering solutions for autonomous self-repair and maintenance that will perform a wide variety or repair and maintenance functions on UVs and low-manpower ships. Concepts and technologies shall permit identification, selection, transport, manipulation, installation, and disposal of physical system components involved in routine maintenance and repair functions. The selected maintenance and repair tasks will be performed while unattended over the full spectrum of expected environmental conditions. The contractor will establish performance goals and objectives for key concepts and technlologies and will provide a plan with milestones for further concept and technology development.

PHASE II: The contractor is expected to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of concepts and technologies critical to an autonomous self-repair and maintenance capability in the shipboard environment. The contractor will demonstrate, based on the development plan of Phase I, that key concepts and technologies meet the goals and objectives established in Phase I. Prototype systems to demonstrate the developing capability will be provided to the Navy for test and evaluation. Life cycle cost estimates for systems and components will be provided by the contractor. The contactor will develop and implement a strategy to transition beneficial technologies to acquisition.

PHASE III: The contractor will finalize development and transition beneficial, affordable, and sustainable (as determined by Phase II testing) technologies into system design and acquisition products, with the end goal of making products available to acquisition programs.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: An autonomous self-repair and maintenance system will benefit the operational maintenance support of any complex system. Man-in-the-loop robotics are already utilized to a limited degree on the external maintenance and inspections of commercial marine and aerospace structures, and are gaining acceptance within the power industry and medical fields for a limited set of internal maintenance tasks as well. Adding autonomy to robotics for internal maintenance tasks on much larger scales and in harsher operating environments opens the door to reduced operational costs and operation in higher risk environments, with direct applicability to a wide range of industries, including oil-gas exploration, manufacturing, and civil infrastructure/utilities.

REFERENCES:
1. Control and driving of a robot for underwater ship hull operation, Roznowski, G. Kowalczuk, Z. Raczynski, P., The Experience of Designing and Application of CAD Systems in Microelectronics, 2001. CADSM 2001. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference. Publication Date: 2001, pp. 179-182, ISBN: 966-553-079-8

2. Automated Refurbishment Maintenance Systems -
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff1996/33.html

3. OCTOPUS Automated Hull Maintenance System - http://ec.europa.eu/research/growth/gcc/projects/in-action-octopus.html#01

KEYWORDS: Robotics; Maintenance; Casualty; Manpower Reduction; Autonomous; Machinery Failure

TPOC: Jordan Eichelbaum
Phone: 301-227-6072
Fax:
Email: [email protected]

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

DoD Notice:   Between November 13 and December 9, 2007, you may talk directly with the Topic Author(s) to ask technical questions about the topics. Their contact information is listed above. For reasons of competitive fairness, direct communication between proposers and topic authors is not allowed starting December 10, 2007, when DoD begins accepting proposals for this solicitation.

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