Jan 29, 2012, 5:34am ET

DARPA plans to revolutionize manufacturing, crowd source vehicles

DARPA plans on revolutionizing automotive manufacturing to dramatically slash development times.

The US defense research organisation, DARPA, is planning to build vehicles for the military more quickly by adopting a crowd-sourcing approach, much in the same way as open-source software is developed.



The project, announced last year as Popular Mechanics reports, aims to "˜enhance the adaptability of our military forces by compressing the development timelines for complex defense systems by at least five times.' DARPA has labelled the undertaking as the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) program. The first vehicle DARPA aims to build under the new program is a "˜heavy and potentially amphibious infantry fighting vehicle,' or FANG - Fast Adaptable Next-Generation Ground Vehicle.



To drastically reduce the design and development process, the FANG program will include three public prize challenges and a Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) effort. The goal of the project is to leverage fab-less design, foundry-style manufacturing, and a crowd-sourced innovation model and culminating in a complete design and fabrication of a new heavy and potentially amphibious infantry fighting vehicle.



While portions of the development of the vehicle will remain off-limits to the crowd-sourcing concept for security reasons, the developers of the program believe that they can rapidly bring the vehicle to readiness using this process. Rather than tooling and using specially constructed production lines, many of the components of the vehicle are planned to come from off-the-shelf parts, ready for assemblage. This will avoid the traditional design-build-test-redesign that is currently the reality for newly developed vehicles in most instances.



The public contest component will comprise of three challenges. The first is expected to go live be the end of 2012 is for a drivetrain suitable for building and separate testing. The second, which take place in 2013, is for the development of an armored chassis. The final challenge will take place in 2014 - the winner of the first two challenges will walk away with $1 million for the their efforts, while the winner of the third will snare $2 million. Ultimately, if the project proves successful, the DARPA team believe that they will eventually be able to get a vehicle from the drawing board to the battlefield in one year.



The concept of open-sourcing, or crowd-sourcing vehicle design may be the way of the future, as manufacturers look to cut costs by saving on the development of unique components, as well as adopting a fabless design approach. Late last year, Aachen University in Germany announced a similar approach to the development of a new EV, the StreetScooter. As with DARPA's longer term goal, the StreeScooter project aims to get the car from design to the road in just 12 months.