SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- Partnering Opportunity for Early Career Initiative for ASSEMBLERS - Assembly of Space SystEMs By using Locomotion and Error-correction for RobustnesS
- Notice Date
- 4/30/2018
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 54171
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life SciencesT
- Contracting Office
- NASA/Langley Research Center, Mail Stop 144, Industry Assistance Office, Hampton, Virginia, 23681-0001
- ZIP Code
- 23681-0001
- Solicitation Number
- SS_LARC_2018_ECI_01
- Point of Contact
- Octavia L Hicks, Phone: 7578648510
- E-Mail Address
-
octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov
(octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This partnering synopsis solicits potential partners to participate in a proposal development activity that addresses the technical objectives and development of a hardware-based technology demonstration in response to an Early Career Initiative (ECI) sponsored by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate and released on April 4, 2018. The deadline for proposals is May 14, 2018. The Early Career Initiative is an internal NASA call for space technology development and demonstration proposals that foster the next step in the professional development of early career NASA technologists by providing cutting-edge hands-on space technology hardware development opportunities. This initiative promotes creative joint partnering within highly collaborative work environments between the best and brightest NASA early career innovators and while teaming with world-class industry, academia, and other government organizations. Proposing teams will include a core team consisting of a no more than eight members total, including NASA and external partner members at least half of which must consist of NASA early career employees. A NASA early career employee must lead the project (Project Lead) and shall engage an experienced NASA mentor, and a STMD mentor who will be identified after selection of the project. Other roles (e.g., Project Manager, Project Scientist) can be filled by team members from NASA or partner. The general approach will be to employ agile systems engineering methods emphasizing working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal process and documentation with milestone-based assessments including a continuation review at the development site and a final presentation to NASA Headquarters. If a project wishes to involve a foreign organization, prior confirmation is needed. Teams must propose innovative space hardware-focused projects lasting no more than 2 years and costing up to $1.25M in procurement and labor per year. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is seeking partners to participate in developing proposals for and collaborating on potential ECI projects. LaRC is pursuing several topic areas that align with NASA's space technology priorities and involve a variety of technical areas that could benefit from partnering. The partner can propose to the technical challenge provided below: ASSEMBLERS revolutionizes autonomous in-space assembly of otherwise impossible space structures and planetary habitats to accelerate exploration and understanding of our cosmos. The cross-agency ASSEMBLERS team proposes the development and demonstration of an assembly system. A multi-agent team of lightweight, high-precision, autonomous, robotic modules configure and reconfigure components while utilizing key advances in technology fields, such as: sensor fusion for state estimation; motion planning for collaborative manipulation and assembly; dynamic simulation and advanced control framework; supervised learning for error detection/classification; high placement precision modules; a genderless gripper system for self-assembly and end-effectors swapping. These key technologies integrated together, enable large in-space structure construction, reducing launch costs, and enabling human exploration throughout the solar system. Ideal academic partners would serve as consultants and provide feedback for assembly of space structures like a space telescope on-orbit or low gravity environment i.e. Lunar. They would provide feedback as required to permit the construction of suitable prototype structures for the ground demonstrations. The partner should have expertise in space truss structures, with a preference for teams that have implemented Stewart platforms in actively-controlled truss structures. Partners must also provide state-of-the-art expertise in the fields of multi-agent motion planning and methods for graceful handling of individual agent failures. The partner must provide expertise in the fields of structures and robotics and have the personnel and facilities required to build and test robots and the structure test articles. An ideal industry partner will have robotics expertise and experience with dynamics and controls for servicing and assembly style missions. These capabilities will enable the contractor to both to develop related algorithms and verify them in a hardware context. Partners should have extensively proven successes in hardware implementations, and the ability to build and test hardware at the contractor's facility. Partners will also be responsible for consulting on hardware such as genderless grippers, power and communications busses and sound structure operations and capabilities. Partners will be ideal for tech transfer and mature low TRL technology to the mid-TRL range. Partners should also prove to have relevant work in control under high latency and autonomous systems development expertise. This partnering opportunity does not guarantee selection for award of any contracts or other agreements, nor is it to be construed as a commitment by NASA to pay for the information solicited. It is expected that the partner(s) selected would provide (at no cost to NASA) technical requirements, conceptual designs, technical data, proposal input, project schedules, and cost estimates. If the proposal is subsequently selected, NASA LaRC anticipates issuing contracts or other agreements to the selected partner(s) for the performance of the proposed tasks. Partner selections will be made by LaRC based on the listed criteria: (1)Technology Approach: This criterion evaluates the technical expertise/capabilities and innovativeness of the external partner in leading and/or executing activities related to the topics above and indicate the resources (skills and time) that would be allocated to the potential proposal development phase. The proposal will also be evaluated on the degree to which the work plan is likely to advance technology and lead to its eventual utilization. (2)Management Approach: This criterion evaluates the overall management approach for the execution of the technical effort. The proposal will be evaluated on the degree to which the management approach is different from standard NASA practices and represents a successful approach from another industry or organization. It will also evaluate how the management approach increases the probability of successfully executing the work plan. (3)Teaming and Workforce Approach: This criterion evaluates the integration of capabilities across the core team members relative to the work plan. (4)Agile Approaches Used in the Past: This criterion evaluates the external partner's past experience in developing and utilizing agile development principles: using development methods that emphasize working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal processes and documentation. Participation in this partnering synopsis is open to all categories of U.S. and non-U.S. organizations, including educational institutions, industry, not-for-profit institutions, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as NASA Centers and other U.S. Government Agencies. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Other Minority Universities (OMUs), small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), veteran-owned small businesses, service disabled veteran-owned small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, and women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) are encouraged to apply. Participation by non-U.S. organizations is welcome but subject to NASA's policy of no exchange of funds, in which each government supports its own national participants and associated costs. RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS: Responses to this partnering synopsis shall be limited to 5 pages in not less than 12-point font for each technical area of interest (i.e. offerors responding to one or more of the mission elements may submit up to 5 pages per each element). Responses shall address each of the evaluation criteria listed below. Resumes of key personnel and a cover page that clearly identifies the topic area addressed by the response do not count against the total allocated page count. All responses shall be submitted to LaRC electronically via e-mail by 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time May 14, 2018, to Octavia Hicks at octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov and to James Neilan at james.h.neilan@nasa.gov. All procurement questions should be directed to Octavia Hicks.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/NASA/LaRC/OPDC20220/SS_LARC_2018_ECI_01/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: 5 Langley Blvd., Hampton, Virginia, 23681, United States
- Zip Code: 23681
- Zip Code: 23681
- Record
- SN04904718-W 20180502/180430230648-2e3a28c9e303f2ea5a7428c95ad838b0 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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