The ARM Institute is looking for mature technologies to improve submarine construction. Source: Adobe Stock
The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing, or ARM, Institute has issued a new Tech Project Call centered on strengthening the marine industrial base, or MIB. The call centers on demonstrating mature technologies that respond to the specific needs of the MIB and aims to accelerate the production of submarines.
Full proposals for this project call are due on Nov. 21 at 5:00 p.m. ET. They must be submitted via the ARM member community. While the project call is publicly available, you must be an ARM member to submit a proposal.
The MIB is facing many challenges across a broad spectrum of industries and capabilities around U.S. ability to meet the demand for a “1+2” requirement for developing one Columbia-class and two Virginia-class submarines. These challenges include, but are not limited to:
- Current and expanding workforce shortfalls
- Loss of master-level knowledge
- An overburdened and unstable supply chain
- Technical challenges that can be mitigated through automated systems and artificial intelligence
The ARM Institute said its project calls are intended to catalyze collaboration among industry, government, and academia to develop robotics and AI to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and secure the organic and defense industrial bases.
The institute added that the calls provide a key platform for collaboration and innovation. They aim to foster a consortium that works together to launch systems that may have otherwise suffered from a lack of funding or technical roadblocks.
MIB project seeks mature technologies ready for production
This project call from the ARM Institute and partner the BlueForge Alliance seeks projects to identify existing technologies to advance into production environments. The proposed solutions should align with at least one of the three capabilities of interest:
- Welding automation and monitoring
- Metrology and in-process inspection
- Casting process automation
The submitted technologies must be mature, with a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7+, and be ready or nearly ready for production environments. Key differentiators in competitive solutions may include rapid scalability, commercially available products, or robust plans for integration and maintenance.
The ARM Institute said it expects the technologies to demonstrate their capabilities in real, shipyard-representative environments by the end of the projects. Respondents must specify their existing technologies’ relevance to the specified capability of interest, as well as the degree to which they meet the broader needs and demands of the MIB for submarine development.
The ARM Institute will host a public webinar on Oct. 23 at noon ET to give the public the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the project call.
More about the ARM Institute
This project call is part of a full schedule of calls for projects that the ARM Institute is releasing this fall. The organization’s members currently have access to two other project calls in draft format. The ARM Institute said it will release these project calls to the public following the members-only access period.
In total, the ARM Institute expects to issue around five Project Calls between October 2025 and January 2026. In the spring of 2025 alone, it issued three project calls. These led to ARM members earning approximately $4.5 million in funding for a total investment of about $8.8 million across the projects.
The Pittsburgh-based ARM Institute is a consortium of more than 450 members and partners across industry, academia, and government. In May, it appointed industry veteran Jorgen Pedersen as its CEO.
Its stated goal is “to make robotics, autonomy, and artificial intelligence more accessible to U.S. manufacturers large and small, train and empower the manufacturing workforce, strengthen our economy and global competitiveness, and elevate national security and resilience.”
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