Figure Engineering brings groundbreaking Chemical Detection systems to portable platforms.
[Lorton, VA]: Today, Figure Engineering, an advanced manufacturing and sustainment technologies company, announced that they have secured $500,000 in the form of a USAF Small Business Innovation Research contract. This phase II enhancement is a continuation of the development of technologies preventing Chromium and Cadmium exposure bringing the total investment to $1.37M.

Figure Engineering will utilize the awarded funds to develop a portable version of their groundbreaking CHEMTM sensor, notifying Airmen of potentially hazardous chemical environments. CHEMTM works hand in hand with Figure’s ACTAVTM to autonomously purge an area of hazardous dust. These technologies will aid in establishing air superiority by enabling the Air Force to maintain fleet readiness and ensuring the ability to rapidly respond to global threats.

CEO and Founder Leonard McCreary spoke on the Phase II enhancement stating, “We will use this enhancement to miniaturize and ruggedize our CHEM™ system into a wearable sensor. It is common to have four or more blasters stripping an aircraft in a hangar at once. Each blaster experiences different exposures at a given moment; The ability to measure each exposure locally substantially increases system benefits of decreasing hazardous exposures and decreasing the mammoth energy costs of running huge ventilation systems.”

Over the coming year, Figure will develop the following advancements to create a portable version of their CHEMTM sensor:

• Develop a quantitative method to characterize hazardous airborne material.
• Develop the portable prototype to a point where it operates in the hazardous environments that the CHEMTM sensor is designed to work in.