Airmen Reverse Pitch & One-on-One Meetings

Airmen are challenged with the delivery of safe potable water by using large numbers of water bottles and time processing potable water. In the field we still rely on outdated processes such as iodine tablets for treating non-potable sources to the current water treatment method and process.

While chlorine is effective it is not immediate and leaves a chemical taste. Surface and groundwater sources available can potentially be contaminated and/or house parasites, bacteria, and viruses. Such sources are non-potable and need purification. Airmen are increasingly opting to keep such chemicals out of their systems. As a result, tablets often have a lengthy shelf life that often leads to expiration. Being able to utilize non-chemical contaminated water sources would cut down on the costs of using water bottles.

Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) is the term for specially trained and certified Airmen. It can take up to three years to get JTAC qualifications; on average, it takes 12-24 months to become qualified. Every 17 months, Airmen must be re-certified in JTAC through an evaluation process. There is no current platform for JTACs when deployed that monitors nutrition or enables physical fitness training. This results in a decrease in fitness level upon return. The Air Force thus must spend resources, such as time and energy, to rebuild Airmen’s fitness levels rather than increase them.

AFWERX is seeking innovative technology solutions that address the gap in physical health and fitness maintenance for JTAC Airmen while deployed.

Several Air Force bases have had challenges with non-compliance of specific Technical Orders for the required Confined Space Entry Program. This resulted in an existing solution exceeding the maximum 1-year authorization and being extended for use by unauthorized personnel and multiple confined space entry documentation errors.

AFWERX is seeking innovative technologies to automate the confined space entry process to include automated scheduling of the Master Entry Plan (to preclude going past the mandatory 1-year authorization), with ability for electronic signature and fully digital program that can be utilized by the technician on a laptop or tablet. Elevating the necessity for printed documentation of AF form 1024 to include the adhesion to a step by step process for filling out the automated form 1024.

AFWERX is seeking robotic drilling technology in order to establish the best possible accuracy of automated match drilling operations with current mechanical equipment. For decades, manual drilling results in too much scrap and rework. Every miss-drill, if it cannot be repaired, has to be scrapped and is a financial loss.

Ideal solution would address the following steps:

• Repeatability of target match drilling accuracy is .02” +/- .005” over 24 feet in length, 12 feet in width, and 6 feet in height.
• The cell shall be designed to be shipped, and allow for cell components to move over time. Optical/laser tracker system measures the location of cell components.
• Some applications could be on composite components and/or on titanium components
• The actual location of the components are updated in the system. This allows the cell to move over time, and still produce accurate parts.
• The interface used to operate the cell guides the operator through the entire process.
• The operator checks off operations as they are completed.
• An existing part is loaded into the cell and an optical/laser scanner scans the part to capture the initial configuration.
• The part is evaluated to ensure it conforms to the original design within specified parameters. Hole locations are extracted from the scanner data and stored.
• The locations are used to guide a drill that reproduces the hole pattern in a new blank part.
• The robot selects the appropriate tool for the current process step and automatically exchanges the current tool for the needed tool. Example: Robot puts the laser scanner on the tool rack and picks up the drill with the appropriate bit. The robot, guided by the optical/laser tracker, accurately drills the hole pattern from the original part into the new blank part.

 
A stretch goal would be to perform residual stress operations like cold working as well as Non-Destructive Inspection. Fixturing is essential to hold the original part and the new blank part to obtain the desired tolerances. Assets can have anywhere from 2000 to 4000 fastener holes that will need to be identified and match drilled within a total maximum positional accuracy of .02” +/- .005”. Tolerance stack-up analysis will need to be conducted to support working asset sizes of up to the following, dimensions: 24 feet in length, 12 feet in width, and 6 feet in height.