Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Soldier tech heads to Afghanistan
MHT's Galen Moore: Military snipers aid accuracy with iPhone
Innerscope Research sensor vest tests biometric response to visual aids
As the U.S. military shifts its focus from Iraq to Afghanistan and other points worldwide, American soldiers will face new challenges — and technology is being developed in Massachusetts to help those soldiers confront them.
Over the past three months, local companies and organizations such as Protonex Inc., BBN Technologies Corp. and the Natick Soldier Systems Center have advanced new products and initiatives to make the soldier of the future more effective in combat. Some of these technological breakthroughs could be deployed within the year, while others remain years away. But despite a devastated economy and talk of troop withdrawals, researchers continue to press forward to put the latest technology into the hands of soldiers.
Much of the new technology headed to soldiers is focused around the use of electric power, and both Southborough-based Protonex and Westborough-based Boston-Power Inc. are working on ways to put more power at the disposal of soldiers in the field. Last week, Protonex released a new wearable power-management system that enables a soldier to run any device (such as a laptop, a radio or a laser) from any power source (a fuel cell, a rechargeable battery or a solar blanket). “This allows rechargeable to be more rechargeable and reduces the use of primary (not rechargeable) batteries,” said Scott Pearson, CEO of Protonex. “It also opens the door to solar power and other renewable energy sources.”
At Boston-Power, which has developed a new kind of lithium-ion battery that is expected make its commercial debut in laptops by Hewlett-Packard Co. this quarter, researchers are also looking to apply the company’s nanotechnology-based batteries to military applications.
Soon that power could be used to drive cutting-edge soldier technology. In January, the Natick center launched the Future Soldier 2030 Initiative, an outline of the personal-technology systems that could become available to soldiers over the next 20 years. The initiative is intended to spur the imagination of technology developers and includes possible advancements in elements such as training, logistics, power and energy. Technologies such as nanomaterials, facial-recognition software, software-defined radios and robotics all could play a major role in making the next-generation soldier faster, stronger, safer and smarter, according to center officials.
The center is already working on several such systems, including a shot-spotting device it has built in partnership with Cambridge-based BBN Technologies. Based on BBN’s vehicle-mounted Boomerang gunshot detection system, which has been in the field since 2005, BBN and the center collaborated on a wearable version, which would allow a soldier under fire to locate a shooter, even while running for cover. The system is in pre-production and should be available to soldiers in Afghanistan this summer, according to Mark Sherman, general manager of BBN’s Boomerang division.
While BBN and the Natick center both have long histories in the New England technology community, the project is the first collaboration between the two operations — and the kind of relationship the center hopes to continue developing with local companies, said one spokesperson.
In fact, a network of soldier technology groups has been building in the region since 2007, according to Donald Quenneville, executive director of the Defense Technology Initiative in Waltham. Last December, for example, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc. of Cambridge proposed to the Natick center’s science and technology board the creation of a commercial Center for Soldier Innovation, aimed at establishing “an economic engine that will align the capabilities and focus of Massachusetts companies and universities” with the center, the proposal read.
In addition, MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, which was established in 2002, is applying nanotechnology to a number of soldier-related problems.
In another local collaboration, the Natick center provided $1.5 million in funding last summer as part of a project with Concord, N.H.-based Nanocomp Technologies Inc., to develop a lighter and stronger body armor based on Nanocomp’s carbon nanotube-based material.
Officials at Protonex, BBN and the Natick center all said the change in administration and troop deployment is not expected to change the development path of new technologies for soldiers.
“We see the military continuing to invest in these kinds of technologies, be it under the Bush administration or Obama,” said Protonex’s Pearson. BBN’s Sherman added that the pressure to get new equipment deployed in the field has not abated as the administration’s focus has moved from Iraq to Afghanistan.
RSS Feeds
Comments
Please Login/Register to post comments.
No comments have been added or approved.