aRoboticsCompany: Multi-system Mobile Corrosion Unit to Enable Forward Sustainment

The Army Sustainment Enterprise, specifically Letterkenny Army Depot (LEAD) has a requirement for a deployable solution for the Army's major corrosion issue, specifically to repair in austere environments. This will empower Soldiers with a field-deployable corrosion capability and enable the Army to conduct sustainment operations at the point of need in contested logistics operations during a great power conflict against China and/or Russia. To address this need, aRoboticsCompany proposes to develop an all-in-one trailer system that can operate a wide array of high power corrosion and metal repair tools in field conditions, independent of main power and stationary compressed air sources. All on-board tool heads will be operable by hand and can be adapted to an on-board long-reach robotic arm to perform work on tall or above overhanging surfaces. aRoboticsCompany proposes to integrate the requested tooling (laser ablation, cold spray, plasma blast, sand blasting, coating application, and welding) into a common interface, generator power bus, and compressed gas supply on an off-road-capable trailer. By sharing power and air supplies, the system footprint can be greatly reduced due to efficient power allocation. All tool heads will have ôdrop-inö capability into the long-reach manipulator to allow operators to rapidly switch between robotic and manual operation. Nearly all the metal repair tools will utilize wear components that require periodic replacement due to direct contact with high-temperature plasmas and particle streams or fast flows of abrasive material. These include plasma torch electrodes (plasma blast), certain powder handling components (cold spray), hoses (sand blasting), and welding torch electrodes (arc welder). These are common parts that can be sourced from many different domestic vendors. Even for the sole-source tools (VRC Dragonfly and Atmospheric Plasma Solutions PlasmaBlast), wear components are readily available for purchase from the manufacturer, and as a last resort, aRoboticsCompany can re-engineer and fabricate replacement components.