Wearable Power

A DoD-Sponsored Contest Seeks to Use the Competitive Instinct
- and a Huge Cash Prize - to Advance Wearable Power Technology.

by Kelly Fodel, SOTECH Correspondent

“Getting energy and using that energy is not easy. The power consumption of the warfighter is going up at a rapid rate. Essentially, we are looking for the ability to put a power system on a warfighter that is light,” said John Hopkins, the wearable power prize program manager from the U. S. Army Research Laboratory. “Although you have some aspects of the technology advancing very well, getting all these parts together on the warfighter did not appear to be advancing at the same rate.

”That is why the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) decided to implement the John Warner NDAA Defense Bill of 2007, which authorizes prize money to be awarded in recognition of research and development of technologies that may benefit the military missions of the DoD.

The prizes are $1 million for the first place team, $500,000 for second place and $250,000 for third place. The Wearable Power Prize final competition will be held at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., starting September 29, 2008. A panel of expert judges will determine the winners.

It may be an untraditional way of doing business, but it is one that organizers are excited about, according to Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Laboratories and Basic Sciences William Rees.

“We are certainly not original in thinking of this. You might remember back over history that Lindbergh took a little flight based on a prize,” Rees said. “[The concept] is to get the most creative people; the entrepreneurs that might not be engaged on any particular problem. We want to get them engaged on what is clearly one of our greatest problems.”

Last year, DDR&E had decided to hold an inaugural prize competition but needed a topic. A few hundred suggestions came in from across the department, which were narrowed down to a handful of options, before leaders finally settled on the challenge of wearable power.

“We asked ourselves, if we could pull it off, what would make the biggest difference?” Rees said. “The traditional approaches [of developing wearable power] were leading to less-than-desired revolutionary advances in a very important area.”

This fall at the contest, the participating teams will put their systems through strenuous testing, under meteorological conditions that will be comparable to a scenario where soldiers might be deployed. While contest organizers refuse to release all the details about the upcoming competition, they did share a few tidbits with Special Operations Technology.

The testing methods will evaluate the systems in as-close-torealistic operating conditions as possible. These tests will occur simultaneously and continuously, with two parts to the competition. First, the power system will be mounted to a vest, where it will go through 92 hours of energy draining power draws, at an average of 20 watts. It is anticipated that some teams will not make it through the first 92 hours.

Systems that sustain the power draw bench test will move on to the “Power Wear Off” day on October 4. Teams will be on the field performing different activities that will drain their power system for four hours. Organizers are not disclosing the various types of electronic equipment that will be utilized during this phase of the competition.

“No organization has ever tested this number of technologies under realistic conditions at the same time,” Hopkins said.

Added Rees: “John and his team have figured out some clever ways to do this. Let’s say we have one hundred teams and had to test each of them for four days… we might be out there for four hundred days before we know the winner. [John’s team has] done some clever engineering to permit all of them… to be done simultaneously.”

When the contest was announced in July 2007, prospective competitors were advised of the parameters of the competition. The prize objective is a “wearable, prototype system that can power a standard warfighter’s equipment for 96 hours but weighs less than half that of the current batteries carried. All components, including the power generator, electrical storage, control electronics, connectors and fuel must weigh four kilograms or less, including any attachments.” Those parameters have remained consistent, and all teams were welcome to participate as long as they met certain safety standards pertaining to their prototype’s fuels and battery chemistries. The safety review team whittled the original 169 teams down to 107 in March.

“Our predominant focus [in eliminating teams before the contest] is on the safety of the technology. We are trying to be as open as possible, and essentially [this process] is to ensure ourselves, the participants, and the government personnel will be safe,” said Hopkins. “Outside these aspects of safety we are not looking at somebody’s system and saying ‘we think this is a bad idea and we won’t let you bring it.’”

Although only three top prizes are being awarded, Rees hopes the contest will reveal a large number of successful technologies that inspire the development of new wearable power products.

“Would that be a wonderful problem to have! If we had seven or eight teams that not only met but exceeded the criteria of the prize… [we would have] the challenge of then doing very detailed tradeoffs between subcomponents between the systems,” Rees said. “We don’t know at this stage what we are going to see. We don’t know whether we’re going to see one team that meets or exceeds the criteria, or half a dozen or more teams.”

Hopkins added: “It is possible that some of the best technologies may not be part of winning teams. We hope they are, but one of our points is to get senior military science and engineering and acquisition personnel out there to see all of these technologies together.”

There is no guarantee that the million dollar team will see its concept developed into an actual product in use by the military. The team’s concept will, however, go on for further evaluation and potential operational use.

Said Rees: “Since we do not know what we are going to see at the final event, it is premature to say whether we are going to see a perfect system that meets everything, or a variety of components on a variety of systems. So, wherever we get great ideas we welcome them.”

Even if the winning technology isn’t adopted in its entirety, Rees is sure of one thing. “We believe this will lead to an ability to remove some of the weight related to the power system our dismounted warfighters carry.”

The “Power Wear Off” contest at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center on October 4 is open to the public. Visit http://www.dod.mil/ddre/prize/ for more information. ♦