2.5-Ton Foldable Litter

PSI and ABS are teaming together again to apply their lightweight deployable litter technology to the challenge of high-g loading of the transported Marine. The PSI and ABS Principal Investigators have already collaborated on the successful development of a collapsible/deployable litter that is half as heavy as the current state of the art and folds into half the volume. In addition to meeting the physical requirements, testing by untrained users has shown that the PSI/ABS approach is also robust to abuse and intuitively easy to operate. The core technologies that have enabled this field-proven performance will be applied to the very aggressive Marine Corps challenge. During the Phase I effort, the team will increase the load capacity of the current design by increasing the local material thicknesses of key elements. The load bearing performance will be confirmed through static testing. The Option effort will be used to fabricate additional litters for Marine user evaluation. During the Phase II, the team will refine the design, add usability features such as Patient Movement Items attachment features, and streamline the manufacturing process. By the end of the Phase II, the team will deliver 15 production litters for user evaluation and destructive testing.