AZAK - S30 Wheel Contested Logistics

AZAK reinvented the wheel and built an electric in-wheel drive technology that places all vehicle drive components inside the wheel, below its center point to lower vehicle center of gravity and apply power to the ground more directly. This provides exceptional offroad performance and more efficient battery use. This design also allows AZAK to build simple center-body frames with unmatched freedom-of-frame design. Finally, this modular design means AZAK vehicles are light, lean, and can easily break down to save space in transport, a key capability to successfully implement Agile Combat Employment (“ACE”). AZAK has demonstrated technical merit in other RDT&E efforts using its lightweight, modular S30 wheels that enable simple construction of vehicles with superior offroad performance and energy efficiency. These wheels have been tested in sand and snow, and in wet and muddy conditions with heavy payloads in steep terrain. They can unpackage to fit in a bundle for airborne insertion, and then assemble into a usable vehicle in under five minutes that will operate with impressive range. Using these 60-lb wheels, AZAK has built jumpable four- and two-wheel solutions that provide special tactics squadrons (STS) with mobility tools in scenarios where they would otherwise be rucking their gear on foot in the field. Following the STS development game plan, AZAK seeks to conduct customer and use case discovery to develop frames and controls for mobility solutions that help other DAF personnel undertaking contested logistics use cases in different settings. AZAK’s four-wheel DART for STS is jumpable and carries 800-1000 lbs. The entire DART weighs roughly 350 lbs. Though not all DAF operations have STS’s jumpability requirement, saving space and weight is universally beneficial throughout DAF and DoD, especially in implementation of ACE and to combat the tyranny of distance. During this proposed scope of work, AZAK expects to uncover specific contingency response or rapid basing needs to move larger payloads, and it will use the same S30 wheels to develop solutions catered to those needs that can be prototyped in Phase II. For example, AZAK could easily design and prototype a larger 8-wheel vehicle to move heavier payloads in and around a FOB, but that also can disassemble into two four-wheel vehicles (DARTs), when needed. With AZAK’s modular wheels and freedom-of-frame design, the options for developing purpose-built, light, lean, and transportable unmanned ground mobility solutions that increase mobility and reduce fuel consumption are virtually limitless.