The Air Force Research Laboratory has opened a new facility that will support its Digital Manufacturing Research Team—a.k.a. DMRT—in researching and developing advanced digital manufacturing technology for the Department of the Air Force.
The establishment of the Manufacturing, Industrial Technologies and Energy Division’s Collaborative Automation for Manufacturing Systems Laboratory aligns with the 2023 Air Force Material Command Strategic Plan to deploy Digital Materiel Management, an initiative aimed at accelerating the acquisition materiel lifecycle using digital technology, the Air Force said Friday.
The CAMS lab invested in artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies, including collaborative robotics and industrial extended reality hardware, to enable autonomous manufacturing.
It also features a motion capture system that allows creating a digital twin of the laboratory for virtual experimentation in a cloud environment.
According to Sean Donegan, the DMRT lead who played a key role in setting up the facility, CAMS complements the labs and partnerships the DMRT has developed and meets critical manufacturing requirements that could not be fulfilled through DMRT’s external partnerships.
“Our strategic research outlook targets necessities like point-of-need manufacturing and forward-deployed manufacturing assets,” said Donegan. “This technology will enable rapid refitting of systems in the field for quick turnarounds. This allows for resilient basing and agile combat employment.”