Participants Sought for Marine Corps CoLab Challenges

The United States Marine Corps has launched a new program, the USMC CoLab, which offers engineers and other technical professionals the opportunity to help develop innovative new equipment that Marines can use in their day-to-day operations. The CoLab is currently seeking participants for two projects that are now underway: a lightweight modular utility vehicle for transporting Marines and small cargo, and an unmanned cargo system for delivering supplies safely and rapidly to troops.

The USMC CoLab alliance employs crowdsourcing to facilitate the collaborative design and production of useful new products for the Marine Corps. The USMC decided to take a crowdsourcing approach in an effort to generate a diversity of ideas and suggestions and inspire better solutions and end products.

Each USMC CoLab challenge consists of two phases: an initial design phase in which participants submit annotated sketches of their ideas, and a second, engineering-focused phase in which participants are encouraged to work in teams and collaborate virtually on the CoLab website, which is hosted on the Launch Forth co-creation platform with support from Deloitte, Siemens, and FATHOM Studios. Once the second phase in completed, a team of engineers and advanced manufacturing specialists will build a prototype of the winning design for the Marines to test.

The CoLab’s first challenge, the Modular Logistics Vehicle, recently finished its first phase and has entered the second stage of the competition, while the Unmanned Cargo System challenge is about to kick off its initial design phase. Individuals and teams alike are encouraged to enter either of the challenges. Cash prizes will be awarded in both stages of each competition, with $5,000 going to the first-place entry, $2,500 being given to the second-place entry, and five awards of $500 each for favorite designs.

To take part in either of the CoLab challenges, visit http://launchforth.io/USMC to sign up, share your technical focus area, and choose the challenges you would like to join. E-mail updates of each challenge will be sent to participants as the challenges progress.

For more information on the USMC CoLab and the Modular Logistics Vehicle and the Unmanned Cargo Delivery challenges, visit http://launchforth.io/USMC or contact Claire Whitin, Deloitte Consulting LLP, by e-mail.