Air Force Research Lab opens AgilePod data to commercial community

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Lisa Daigle Assistant Managing Editor Military Embedded Systems

Photo: Air Force Research Laboratory WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has opened up the technical data package for its AgilePod to the wider intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) community in an attempt to further the development of compatible sensor products.

AgilePod -- a multi-intelligence, open-architecture, reconfigurable, and customizable prototype designed for the ISR and Air Force Special Operations communities -- is comprised of multiple modules with each module configured to accommodate electronic systems, subsystems, or both, associated with ISR and non-ISR mission requirements.

AFRL officials say that in order to continue the momentum the AgilePod has seen and provide the best system options to warfighters, the AFRL Materials and Manufacturing Directorate recently entered into 14 different information-transfer agreements (ITAs) with commercial companies to share the AgilePod technical data package.

“These agreements allow companies to get in on the ground floor and grow with AgilePod as it becomes the new standard,” said Capt. Blake McCollum of the AFRL/RX Electronics and Sensors Branch. “They can design sensors that integrate as ‘plug and play’ into AgilePod as it becomes a program of record.”

An ITA is a way of transferring technology that allows the government to share its self-developed software that is related to design and manufacturing activities with other entities; an ITA typically covers software executable files, source code, 3-D CAD models, and system analysis. “These ITAs are vital to getting the AgilePod specifications into the right hands,” added McCollum.

Additionally, while the original goal of the agreements was to allow commercial companies the chance to develop compatible systems, the ITAs have also returned valuable feedback to the AFRL on the AgilePod and its technical data package.