Physiological Research

ACT’s team of engineers developed its Aviation Hypoxia Training Systems (AHTS) in response to three requests from different government agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI), and U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) requested our assistance to improve their altitude simulation systems for training pilots.

These agencies train pilots to recognize the symptoms of inflight hypoxia. This training saves the lives of pilots and passengers.

They were using hypobaric chambers to simulate the high altitudes encountered by pilots. These chambers have several problems:

  1. Expense – These chambers cost millions of dollars to acquire and hundreds of thousands to maintain each year.
  2. Injuries and Health Risks – Hypobaric chambers caused barotrauma, decompression sickness, and neurological damage.
  3. Fidelity of Training – Hypobaric chambers could not accommodate modern flight simulators

To fund the program, NAVAIR utilized the Small Business Innovation Research program. SBIR program’s mission is: “To support scientific excellence and technological innovation.”

The SBIR program awards government contracts to innovative small businesses that exhibit technological and scientific excellence. The SBIR program is a highly competitive program that requires the government to select the best technology and engineering team after an exhaustive search of competing technologies and businesses.

1Physiological

NAVAIR chose our team to develop the next generation of altitude simulation. Doing so required solving many technical problems of oxygen control that were not immediately apparent. After millions of dollars in R&D and years of engineering work, we developed technology that met the Navy’s requirements for a system that was accurate, safe, inexpensive, and compatible with flight simulators.

ACT is a sole source supplier to the government for all applications of oxygen control and altitude simulation. As a sole-source supplier, ACT is already approved for government contracts. ACT has already been through the competition phase and has been selected as the premier supplier of altitude simulation technology. The government can contract directly with ACT and need not go through the lengthy bureaucratic process of competing proposals and multiple bids. The government can (and does) buy from ACT without a competitive process.

As an SBIR winner, ACT maintains all rights of ownership to the technology, including commercialization rights. The government has a nonexclusive license to use the technology; however, it may not disclose ACT’s designs, methods, or technology to any other party or use it as specifications with any competing business.

The result of this work is ACT’s Aviation Hypoxia Training System. It eliminates the health risks of hypobaric chambers and allows for using flight simulators for greater fidelity of training. All at a fraction of the cost of the previous technology.