Infrastructure in an AR World

Excite the crowd and summarize your solution in a few sentences

You don’t really think about what it takes for a building to operate, you just expect it. You expect the lights to work, the water to run hot and cold… and when you pick up a phone, that it works. But what you don’t often think about is the man-hours it takes to maintain that infrastructure each day. Well, that is until it fails… in some jobs this may not be life or death but, a downed SIPR facility or runway for these issues could be the difference between actual life and death. 

What is the Problem, Opportunity, or Unmet Need (POU)?

What if I was to tell you that this entire unseen world beneath your feet requires daily maintenance and has Millions of dollars poured into maintaining it at every installation. What’s even worse is that almost every other area of military technology has advanced within the 21st century except for the ways our civil engineers find these underground pipes and cables. Old-fashioned maps similar to blueprints invented in the 1800s paired with a 16th century pseudo-science method called dowsing is in actuality how a dig site can look like modern day. No wonder it can take days to do something as simple as fixing a building pipe and mere hours or minutes to fix a similar style aircraft pipe.

Any job you start without being able to see the problem can easily turn into days of work simply just to locate the break. From there heaven forbid you accidently break a line that isn’t listed on a map, which can happen in mere seconds. Alternatively, another possibility is not finding the line where it’s supposed to be based off the antiquated map, which actually happens more often than you think.

By finally coming out of the Renaissance era and equipping our Civil Engineers with present day technology we can give them true X-Ray vision. Using Augmented Reality like our civilian sector counterparts can make locating and mapping these unmapped lines a breeze. Moving from an invisible problem to a visible solution. This technology would severely decrease the amount of man-hours spent on job sites, reduce the chances of damage during excavations by 50%, increasing the speed of utility locating by 50-60%, and provide a 100% updated map. Even using this technology once to get a map of our underground infrastructure would cost a fraction out of the overall Air Force Civil Engineering fund, but provide easily $350,000 in savings per base, per year. 

Who has the Problem, Opportunity, or Unmet Need?

Every base has this issue. If there is infrastructure, which even the barest of bases have, then there is a need for up keeping that infrastructure.

What are the users doing now? What is the status quo?

Tomorrow’s war is going to be vastly different than the past now that we have the added domains of space and cyberspace. We need to not only put planes in the air but also have the infrastructure to care for these crucial domains at all stations across the globe. However, deteriorating infrastructure is an invisible inside threat that impacts every mission across the base. Other branches sometimes joke that the Air Force is stopped by two things: Lightning within five and internet going down. Although a good-natured joke between branches there is some truth to the fact that we rely heavily on modern day technology and the communication, power, water, and gas lines that allow us to use them. 

Currently to fix issues CE has to uncover the earth in the location that they believe the issue to be prominent. Causing wasted man-hours both on the front end digging up the area and, on the backend re-pathing the area. Sometimes these efforts are in vain because there was no way to correctly identify the problem area from the surface, resulting in a calculated guess of the issue of where the issue lies. Old-fashioned maps similar to blueprints invented in the 1800s are also paired with a 16th century pseudo-science method called dowsing to ineffectively locate pipes under the ground. These methods are antiquated and wasteful in manhours and construction costs. If we knew where everything was located underground a job that currently takes 16 hours to complete could be reduced to around a three-hour job. Freeing up our Civil Engineer Squadrons to tackle other base projects.

On average, simply updating our maps one time could reduce the time required to complete jobs by 50%. Having the technology to constantly scan and update our infrastructure into 3D maps/AR can decrease job time even more. Millions currently go into fixing mistakes made on jobsites every day. This technology would severely decrease the likelihood of these mistakes and save the money associated with them. 

What is the solution?

Currently there is no true method for being able to determine what exactly is beneath the grass, cement, and concrete on base other than to dig it up. Leaving every dig with an element of surprise; whether it’s digging into a line that is unexpected or finding an abandoned line that was not listed on any map. What makes matters worse is any of these lines can be snapped or broken within seconds during a dig, causing days to weeks’ worth of repair work from incorrect mapping.

Additionally, CE is charged with maintaining and inspecting all pavement, roadways, taxiways, and runways. At my location alone this took 2,635 hours, which would equate to $97,705. With updated technology these surfaces could instead be scanned at high speeds and detect defects such as sinkhole prior to formation. This could take inspection jobs from hours to mere minutes. Enabling areas such as runways to be inspected faster with a higher quality assurance that the inspection was done correctly with no oversight on any area scanned.

 A scanning device that can scan our bases to render one infrastructure map and detect infrastructure issues below the surface before issues are even visible. Using microwaves and AR technology a vehicle is able to scan the ground beneath it mapping areas with potential sinkholes as well as checking piping for corrosion and other potential hazards beneath the surface. These maps are then transferred through AR technology to provide CE with a real time underground map of the Air Base. This can easily save Millions and potentially Billions each year when applied in conjunction with runway maintenance and man hours saved both pre-dig and post-dig.

These AR data images can be seen through either a tablet or Augmented Reality Glasses giving the user true X-Ray vision that you have to see to believe. With this technology CE can pinpoint issues before they even arise and no longer have to live in a preventative and reactive cycle when it comes to ground maintenance everything can be done with pinpoint precision mapping. Runways, roads, sinkholes, pipes, natural disaster (Earthquake) recovery, it can all be scanned and detected for issues without ever having to break ground. May companies are using this technology currently on the civilian sector and we would benefit greatly from partnering with one to update how we are able to see infrastructure on a base.

Why/how is the proposed solution better than the status quo?

It saves time, money, man-hours, resources, and completely reinvents how we look at base infrastructure.  We are currently using old-fashioned maps similar to blueprints invented in the 1800s  paired with a 16th century pseudo-science method called dowsing to ineffectively locate pipes under the ground. These methods are antiquated and wasteful in manhours and construction costs. If we knew where everything was located underground a job that currently takes 16 hours to complete could be reduced to around a three-hour job. Freeing up our Civil Engineer Squadrons to tackle other base projects and making their jobs faster and easier to complete. 

Are there known risks and barriers to implementing this solution?

We would have to partner with commercial industry to buy these devices or use for a one-time scan.

What resources do you have available to you currently to solve this problem?

Many companies currently have the technology to do these scans and provide us the maps. It is simply a matter of deciding how often the scans need to take place and completing a contract. These companies also already work with the federal government and can provide high security for keeping these maps safe. They area also compatible with the current GeoSpace system used by Civil Engineers within the Air Force. However, with it being vastly different technology and being vastly outside of a normal budget item than what we use it would be hard to implement at one base alone without higher headquarters backing.

What is your "Ask"?

Either purchase these units for all bases within the Air Force and hopefully one day the DOD or work with a company to do a one-time scan and provide it to our base civil engineers.

View the video here:

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/866039/spark-tank-submission-infrastructure-ar-world

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