Smart structures challenge from America Makes
April 11, 2016
America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute based in Youngstown, Ohio, USA, has announced it has set a challenge to find organisations capable of producing smart structures, for example parts with integrated devices such as sensors or actuators, made with Additive Manufacturing technology. As a reward, the Institute is offering Silver-level Memberships to America Makes for one year, worth $15,000, for successful organisations.
Producing smart structures has been a long-standing promise of Additive Manufacturing that remains unfulfilled. America Makes would like to understand and further the state of the art of this potentially disruptive technology.
The challenge has been set via the InnoCentive website, an online innovation marketplace where creative minds solve some of the world’s most important problems for cash awards. An InnoCentive RTP (Reduction to Practice) Challenge is a prototype that proves an idea, requiring the applicant to submit a validated solution, either in the form of original data or a physical sample.
Submissions to the challenge should include a detailed description of the proposed solution completely documenting the smart structure and the AM technology used to build it. Delivery of a sample smart structure for testing by America Makes is also required. No IP transfer is required.
The deadline for submitting solutions for the challenge is May 11.
Find out more and enter here: goo.gl/r4S21m
