Ultra-Lightweight Mechanical Metamaterials for Mitigating Impacts and Crashes of Urban Air Mobility Vehicles

Urban Air Mobility Vehicles (UAMVs) are a transportation technology with potentially transformative potential for how passengers and goods are ferried in urban environments. A critical barrier to adoption is ensuring safety of passengers in hard-landing and crash scenarios. Our proposed solution is to develop an advanced materials system that is light-weight, highly energy-absorbent/dissipative, and capable of out-performing current solutions by providing multi-/omnidirectional impact protection. Current solutions typically fail in this latter regard, and instead trade-off between the amount of energy absorbed and the directional sensitivity to a given impact. Our approach circumvents this trade-off by utilizing Origami-Inspired Mechanical Metamaterials (OIMMs), which are a new class of advanced materials systems. Essentially, OIMMs are designed by embedding repeated geometric patterns into a base material to augment and enhance the base material’s properties. The result is a metamaterial that is lighter, stronger, and more multi-functional. Our SBIR Phase I effort was successful at developing OIMMs that satisfy the technical criteria desired in energy absorbing devices without making the trade-offs typically found in such systems. Our Phase II effort has been successful at validating the technology and identifying scalable manufacturing methods for the technology to go to market. In this SBIR Phase II-E/X proposal, we seek to build on these successes to: (1) demonstrate the technology’s integration with a full-scale UAMV; and (2) develop a mechanical metamaterial design guide for consumers of the material. Both activities accelerate commercialization by de-risking adoption of metamaterials for OEMs/Primes/Integrators, while simultaneously producing durable work product.

We anticipate the greatest opportunities for OIMMs in future NASA applications will arise from the ability to decrease weight while retaining mechanical function: Crash-landing protection for UAV/drones/rover vehicles (ultra-lightweight protection from impact forces) Physical protection during planetary exploration (Moon to Mars Campaign) Deployable materials for protected habitable spaces on manned missions (Moon to Mars Campaign) Lander systems technologies that absorb/dissipate/redirect energy

Our market research has indicated a variety of applications in the public/private sector: Lightweighting in transportation including semi-trailer manufacturing and electric vehicles Advanced materials for defense (USAF/Lockheed Martin/Boeing dual-use) Body armor for US Soldier protection (US Army dual-use) Protection of vertical lift devices in the commercial UAVs / drone market

This is a mature technology (TRL 8) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.