ADAPT - Advanced, Agile Manufacturing of Limited-Production Swarming Unmanned Systems (UxS) to Support Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA

VR Rehab, Inc. (VRR) working with team partner Arizona State University (ASU) has already successfully developed and demonstrated rapid, distributed, on-demand, small-scaled, domestic mass manufacturing of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) capable of autonomously delivering one-kilogram payloads to pre-selected locations at least two kilometers distant from the launch point. We have achieved key goals towards supporting the Navy in delivering supplies to multiple disaster victims over a wide area in Humanitarian Assistance – Disaster Relief (HADR) operations without the need to manufacture and maintain a large supply of systems before they are needed. VRR’s HellHive™ technologies safely package, transport, and deploy single and/or multiple UAS, and/or Swarms, including commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) vehicles or VRR/ASU’s custom designed ‘HoneyBee’ UAS which are low cost, single-use, quadcopters. Final Phase I HoneyBee test flights auto launched from HellHives, traveled autonomously 2 km, with cruising altitude of 100m in less than 4 minutes at 31 mph.  Phase II speeds will be higher towards 65mph objectives. HoneyBees are flexibly designed for rapid, on-demand manufacturing from multiple sources with a robust supply chain. The current prototype HoneyBee can be assembled for a material cost of $170 and has been successfully test flown in three locations, Phase II costs are projected to be <$145.  Key HADR strengths of our innovations are based upon: HellHives enabling direct launching from the shipping containers providing disruptive advantages to Disaster Site HADR personnel: No Unpacking; No Preparations; No Physically Handling the Drones, No accidental breakage, no dust/dirt/mud contamination to cause malfunctions, just open the HellHive’s lid, upload the destinations file, and press ‘go’ to auto launch. Easier, Faster, and Safer for Disaster Site HADR personnel. (Remote control options are also supported, towards further reducing Disaster Site HADR personnel workloads) Detailed supply chain and assembly plans for 10 – 1000 drones are presented with a program for distributed small-scale, on-demand mass manufacturing. Plans are also presented for using alternative components to avoid production delays due to supply chain problems. The VRR/ASU team has demonstrated successful functional prototype aircraft, launch systems, and manufacturing processes addressing the 3 focus areas for this topic: Agile manufacturing on-demand solutions, Control systems for unmanned platforms, and Payload concepts using both commercial vehicles and HoneyBees. Commercialization and transition plans are presented. In Phase II through agile development processes our team will ensure performance for emerging HADR requirements including end-to-end support with optimized mass manufacturing processes that include quality control and continuous improvements, & field performance exploiting the parallel nature of HellHives to rapidly launch very large Swarms in under a minute.