An articulated joint for the High-mobility, Articulated, All-wheel drive, Modular vehicle (Haamer)

The United States military's current doctrine calls for the ability to quickly deploy small units to any place on the globe. The two biggest challenges of this new doctrine are providing the airlift capability for the military's vehicles and overcoming the infrastructure that is incapable of supporting the military's vehicle that is found in many Third-World nations. A new vehicular technology, based on high-mobility, articulated, modular, all-wheel-drive vehicles will overcome these challenges by providing the necessary functional capabilities in smaller-than-current-vehicle modules. The goal of this proposed Phase I SBIR is to design, simulate and develop a small-scale working model of the articulated vehicle-module joint. Some of the technical challenges to be addressed with this project include the kinematic arrangement of the vehicle-module joint elements, the automatic coupling/decoupling process and the incorporation of the vehicle-module joint into the active suspension system. The articulated vehicle-module joint will support connectivity between modules of any type, wheeled or tracked, driven or frowed, and manned or unmanned. BENEFITS: The component and functional modularity characteristics allow civilian police, fire and rescue units to purchase several pieces of a large system for use for particular applications. As the organization's needs expand, more pieces can be purchased to provide greater capability without ever requiring large captical expenditures.